THE  PORTRAIT 
OF  MR  W.  H. 


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THE  PORTRAIT 
OFMRW.  H. 

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THE  PORTRAIT 
OFMRW.  H, 


462041 


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1 

^^ 

THE  PORTRAIT  OF 
MRW.H. 

HAD  been  dining  with  Erskine  in 
his  pretty  little  house  in  Birdcage 
Walk,  and  we  were  sitting  in  the 
library  over  our  coffee  and  ciga' 
rettes,  when  the  question  of  liter' 
ary  forgeries  happened  to  turn  up  in  conversation. 
I  cannot  at  present  remember  how  it  was  that  we 
struck  upon  this  somewhat  curious  topic,  as  it  was 
at  that  time,  but  I  know  we  had  a  long  discussion 
about  Macpherson,  Ireland,  and  Chatterton,  and 
that  with  regard  to  the  last  I  insisted  that  his  sc 
called  forgeries  were  merely  the  result  of  an  artistic 
desire  for  perfect  representation;  that  we  had  no 
right  to  quarrel  with  an  artist  for  the  conditions 
under  which  he  chooses  to  present  his  work;  and 
that  all  Art  being  to  a  certain  degree  a  mode  of  act' 
ing,  an  attempt  to  realise  one's  own  personality  on 
some  imaginative  plane  out  of  reach  of  the  tram' 


2  THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H. 

melling  accidents  and  limitations  of  real  life,  to  cen' 
sure  an  artist  for  a  forgery  was  to  confuse  an  ethical 
with  an  aesthetical  problera. 

Erskine,  who  was  a  good  deal  older  than  I  was, 
and  had  been  listening  to  me  with  the  amused  def- 
erence of  a  man  of  forty,  suddenly  put  his  hand 
upon  my  shoulder  and  said  to  me,  "What  would 
you  say  about  a  young  man  who  had  a  strange 
theory  about  a  certain  w^ork  of  art,  believed  in  his 
theory,  and  committed  a  forgery  in  order  to  prove 

itr 

"Ah!  that  is  quite  a  different  matter,"!  answered. 

Erskine  remained  silent  for  a  few  moments,  look- 
ing at  the  thin  grey  threads  of  smoke  that  were 
rising  from  his  cigarette.  "Yes,"  he  said,  after  a 
pause,  "quite  different." 

There  was  something  in  the  tone  of  his  voice,  a 
slight  touch  of  bitterness  perhaps,  that  excited  my 
curiosity.  "Did  you  ever  know  anybody  who  did 
that?"  I  cried. 

"Yes,"  he  answered,  throwing  his  cigarette  into 
the  fire — "a  great  friend  of  mine,  Cyril  Graham. 
He  was  very  fascinating,  and  very  foolish,  and  very 


THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H.  3 

heartless.  However,  he  left  me  the  only  legacy  I 
ever  received  in  my  life." 

"What  was  that  ?  "  I  exclaimed  laughing.  Erskine 
rose  from  his  seat,  and  going  over  to  a  tall  inlaid 
cabinet  that  stood  between  the  two  windows,  un' 
locked  it,  and  came  back  to  where  I  was  sitting, 
carrying  a  small  panel  picture  set  in  an  old  and 
somewhat  tarnished  Elizabethan  frame. 

It  was  a  fuU'length  portrait  of  a  young  man  in 
late  sixteenth'century  costume,  standing  by  a  table, 
with  his  right  hand  resting  on  an  open  book.  He 
seemed  about  seventeen  years  of  age,  and  was  of 
quite  extraordinary  personal  beauty,  though  evi- 
dently somewhat  effeminate.  Indeed,  had  it  not 
been  for  the  dress  and  the  closely  cropped  hair,  one 
would  have  said  that  the  face,  with  its  dreamy,  wist' 
fill  eyes  and  its  delicate  scarlet  lips,  was  the  face  of 
a  girl.  In  manner,  and  especially  in  the  treatment 
of  the  hands,  the  picture  reminded  one  of  Francois 
Clouet's  later  work.  The  black  velvet  doublet  with 
its  fantastically  gilded  points,  and  the  peacock'blue 
background  against  which  it  showed  up  so  pleas- 
antly, and  from  which  it  gained  such  luminous 


4  THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H. 

value  of  colour,  were  quite  in  Clouet's  style;  and 
the  two  masks  of  Tragedy  and  Comedy  that  hung 
somewhat  formally  from  the  marble  pedestal  had 
that  hard  severity  of  touch — so  different  from  the 
facile  grace  of  the  Italians — which  even  at  the 
Court  of  France  the  great  Flemish  master  never 
completely  lost,  and  which  in  itself  has  always  been 
a  characteristic  of  the  northern  temper. 

"It  is  a  charming  thing,''  I  cried;  "but  who  is  this 
wonderful  young  man  whose  beauty  Art  has  so 
happily  preserved  for  us?" 

"This  is  the  portrait  of  Mr  W.  H.,*"  said  Erskine, 
with  a  sad  smile.  It  might  have  been  a  chance  ef' 
feet  of  light,  but  it  seemed  to  me  that  his  eyes  were 
swimming  with  tears. 

"Mr  W. H.!"  I  repeated;  "who  was  MrW.H.?" 

"Don't  you  remember?"  he  answered;  "look  at 
the  book  on  which  his  hand  is  resting," 

"I  see  there  is  some  writing  there,  but  I  cannot 
make  it  out,"  I  replied. 

"Take  this  magnifying'glass  and  try," said  Erskine, 
with  the  same  sad  smile  still  playing  about  his 
mouth. 


THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H.  5 

I  took  the  glass,  and  moving  the  lamp  a  little 
nearer,  I  began  to  spell  out  the  crabbed  sixteenth' 
century  handwriting.  "To  The  Onlie  Begetter  Of 
These  Insuing  Sonnets."  . . .  "Good  heavens!"  I 
cried,  "is  this  Shakespeare's  Mr  W.  H.?" 

"Cyril  Graham  used  to  say  so,"  muttered  Erskine. 

"But  it  is  not  a  bit  like  Lord  Pembroke,"  I  rejoined . 
"I  know  the  Wilton  portraits  very  well.  I  was 
staying  near  there  a  few  weeks  ago." 
.    "Do  you  really  believe  then  that  the  Sonnets  are 
addressed  to  Lord  Pembroke?"  he  asked. 

"I  am  sure  of  it,"  I  answered.  "Pembroke,  Shake- 
speare, and  Mrs  Mary  Fitton  are  the  three  person- 
ages of  the  Sonnets;  there  is  no  doubt  at  all  about  it." 

"Well,  I  agree  with  you,"  said  Erskine, "  but  I  did 
not  always  think  so.  I  used  to  believe — well,  I  sup- 
pose  I  used  to  believe  in  Cyril  Graham  and  his 
theory." 

"And  what  was  that?"  I  asked,  looking  at  the 
wonderful  portrait,  which  had  already  begun  to 
have  a  strange  fascination  for  me. 

"It  is  a  long  story,"  he  murmured,  taking  the  pic 
ture  away  from  me — rather  abruptly  I  thought  at 


6  THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H. 

the  time — "a  very  long  story ;  but  if  you  care  to 
hear  it,  I  will  tell  it  to  you." 

"I  love  theories  about  the  Sonnets,"  I  cried;  "but 
I  don  t  think  I  am  likely  to  be  converted  to  any  new 
idea.  The  matter  has  ceased  to  be  a  mystery  to  any 
one.  Indeed,  I  wonder  that  it  ever  was  a  mystery." 

"As  I  don  t  beHeve  in  the  theory,!  am  not  likely 
to  convert  you  to  it,"  said  Erskine,  laughing;  "but 
it  may  interest  you." 

"Tell  it  to  me,  of  course,"  I  answered.  "If  it  is  half 
as  delightful  as  the  picture,  I  shall  be  more  than 
satisfied." 

"Well,"  said  Erskine,  lighting  a  cigarette,  "I  must 
begin  by  teUing  you  about  Cyril  Graham  himself. 
He  and  I  were  at  the  same  house  at  Eton.  I  was  a 
year  or  two  older  than  he  was,  but  we  were  im' 
mense  friends,  and  did  all  our  work  and  all  our  play 
together.  There  was,  of  course,  a  good  deal  more 
play  than  work,  but  I  cannot  say  that  I  am  sorry 
for  that.  It  is  always  an  advantage  not  to  have  re 
ceived  a  sound  commercial  education,  and  what  I 
learned  in  the  playing  fields  at  Eton  has  been  quite 
as  useful  to  me  as  anything  I  was  taught  at  Cam' 


THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H.  7 

bridge.  I  should  tell  you  that  Cyrirs  father  and 
mother  were  both  dead.  They  had  been  drowned 
in  a  horrible  yachting  accident  ofFthe  Isle  of  Wight. 
His  father  had  been  in  the  diplomatic  service,  and 
had  married  a  daughter,  the  only  daughter,  in  fact, 
of  old  Lord  Crediton,  who  became  Cyrirs  guardian 
after  the  death  of  his  parents.  I  don't  think  that 
Lord  Crediton  cared  very  much  for  Cyril.  He  had 
never  really  forgiven  his  daughter  for  marrying  a 
man  who  had  no  title.  He  was  an  extraordinary- 
old  aristocrat,  who  swore  like  a  costermonger,  and 
had  the  manners  of  a  farmer.  I  remember  seeing  him 
once  on  Speech'day.  He  growled  at  me,  gave  me 
a  sovereign,  and  told  me  not  to  grow  up  a  'damned 
Radical  Hke  my  father.  Cyril  had  very  little  affec 
tion  for  him,  and  was  only  too  glad  to  spend  most 
of  his  hohdays  with  us  in  Scotland.  They  never 
really  got  on  together  at  all.  Cyril  thought  him  a 
bear,  and  he  thoiight  Cyril  effeminate.  He  was  ef' 
feminate,  I  suppose,  in  some  things,  though  he  was 
a  capital  rider  and  a  capital  fencer.  In  fact  he  got 
the  foils  before  he  left  Eton.  But  he  was  very  lan^ 
guid  in  his  manner,  and  not  a  little  vain  of  his  good 


8  THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H. 

looks,  and  had  a  strong  objection  to  football,  which 
he  used  to  say  was  a  game  only  suitable  for  the  sons 
of  the  middle  classes.  The  two  things  that  really 
gave  him  pleasure  were  poetry  and  acting.  At  Eton 
he  was  always  dressing  up  and  reciting  Shakespeare, 
and  when  we  went  up  to  Trinity  he  became  a  mem" 
ber  of  the  A.D.C.  his  first  term.  I  remember  I  was 
always  very  jealous  of  his  acting.  I  was  absurdly 
devoted  to  him;  I  suppose  because  we  were  so 
different  in  most  things.  I  was  a  rather  awkward, 
weakly  lad,  with  huge  feet,  and  horribly  freckled. 
Freckles  run  in  Scotch  families  just  as  gout  does  in 
English  families.  Cyril  used  to  say  that  of  the  two 
he  preferred  the  gout;  but  he  always  set  an  ab- 
surdly high  value  on  personal  appearance,  and  once 
read  a  paper  before  our  Debating  Society  to  prove 
that  it  was  better  to  be  good-looking  than  to  be 
good.  He  certainly  was  wonderfully  handsome. 
People  who  did  not  like  him,  Philistines  and  college 
tutors,  and  young  men  reading  for  the  Church,  used 
to  say  that  he  was  merely  pretty;  but  there  was  a 
great  deal  more  in  his  face  than  mere  prettiness.  I 
think  he  was  the  most  splendid  creature  I  ever  saw, 


THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H.  9 

and  nothing  could  exceed  the  grace  of  his  move' 
ments,  the  charm  of  his  manner.  He  fascinated 
everybody  who  was  worth  fascinating,  and  a  great 
many  people  who  were  not.  He  was  often  wilful 
and  petulant,  and  I  used  to  think  him  dreadfully 
insincere.  It  was  due,  I  think,  chiefly  to  his  inordi' 
nate  desire  to  please.  Poor  Cyril!  I  told  him  once 
that  he  was  contented  with  very  cheap  triumphs, 
but  he  only  tossed  his  head,  and  smiled.  He  was 
horribly  spoiled.  All  charming  people,  I  fancy,  are 
spoiled.  It  is  the  secret  of  their  attraction. 

"However,  I  must  tell  you  about  Cyril's  acting. 
You  know  that  no  women  are  allowed  to  play  at  the 
A.D.C.  At  least  they  were  not  in  my  time.  Idont 
know  how  it  is  now.  Well,  of  course  Cyril  was 
always  cast  for  the  girls'  parts,  and  when 'As  You 
Like  It'  was  produced  he  played  Rosalind.  It  was 
a  marvellous  performance.  You  will  laugh  at  me, 
but  I  assure  you  that  Cyril  Graham  was  the  only 
perfect  Rosalind  I  have  ever  seen.  It  would  be  im' 
possible  to  describe  to  you  the  beauty,  the  delicacy, 
the  refinement  of  the  whole  thing.  It  made  an  im- 
mense sensation,  and  the  horrid  little  theatre,  as  it 


lO  THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H. 

was  then,  was  crowded  every  night.  Even  now 
when  I  read  the  play  I  can't  help  thinking  of  Cyril; 
the  part  might  have  been  written  for  him,  he  played 
it  with  such  extraordinary  grace  and  distinction. 
The  next  term  he  took  his  degree,  and  came  to  Lon' 
don  to  read  for  the  Diplomatic.  But  he  never  did 
any  work.  He  spent  his  days  in  reading  Shake 
speare's  Sonnets,  and  his  evenings  at  the  theatre.  He 
was,  of  course,  wild  to  go  on  the  stage.  It  was  all 
that  Lord  Crediton  and  I  could  do  to  prevent  him. 
Perhaps,  if  he  had  gone  on  the  stage  he  would  be 
alive  now.  It  is  always  a  silly  thing  to  give  advice, 
but  to  give  good  advice  is  absolutely  fatal.  I  hope 
you  will  never  fall  into  that  error.  If  you  do,  you 
will  be  sorry  for  it. 

"Well,  to  come  to  the  real  point  of  the  story, 
one  afternoon  I  got  a  letter  from  Cyril  asking  me  to 
come  round  to  his  rooms  that  evening.  He  had 
charming  chambers  in  Piccadilly  overlooking  the 
Green  Park,  and  as  I  used  to  go  to  see  him  almost 
every  day,  I  was  rather  surprised  at  his  taking  the 
trouble  to  write.  Of  course  I  went,  and  when  I  ar' 
rived  I  found  him  in  a  state  of  great  excitement. 


THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H.  II 

He  told  me  that  he  had  at  last  discovered  the  true 
jsecret  of  Shakespeare's  Sonnets;  that  all  the  schol' 
ars  and  critics  had  been  entirely  on  the  wrong  track ; 
and  that  he  was  the  first  who,  working  purely  by 
internal  evidence,  had  found  out  who  Mr  W^  H. 
really  was.  He  was  perfectly  wild  with  delight,  and 
for  a  long  time  would  not  tell  me  his  theory.  Finally, 
he  produced  a  bundle  of  notes,  took  his  copy  of  the 
Sonnets  off  the  mantelpiece,  and  sat  down  and  gave 
me  a  long  lecture  on  the  whole  subject. 

"He  began  by  pointing  out  that  the  young  man 
to  whom  Shakespeare  addressed  these  strangely 
passionate  poems  must  have  been  somebody  who 
was  a  really  vital  factor  in  the  development  of  his 
dramatic  art,  and  that  this  could  not  be  said  of 
either  Lord  Pembroke  or  Lord  Southampton.  In' 
deed,  whoever  he  was,  he  could  not  have  been  any 
body  of  high  birth,  as  was  shown  very  clearly  by 
Sonnet  XXV,  in  which  Shakespeare  contrasts  him' 
self  with  men  who  are  'great  princes'  favourites'; 
says  quite  frankly — 

*Let  those  who  are  in  favour  with  their  stars 
Of  public  honour  and  proud  titles  boast. 


12  THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H. 

Whilst  I,  whom  fortune  of  such  triumph  bars, 
Unlooked  for  joy  in  that  I  honour  most'; 

and  ends  the  sonnet  by  congratulating  himself  on 
the  mean  state  of  him  he  so  adored: 

'Then  happy  I,  that  love  and  am  beloved 
Where  I  may  not  remove  nor  be  removed/ 

This  sonnet  Cyril  declared  would  be  quite  unintel' 
hgible  if  we  fancied  that  it  was  addressed  to  either 
the  Earl  of  Pembroke  or  the  Earl  of  Southampton, 
both  of  whom  were  men  of  the  highest  position 
in  England  and  fully  entitled  to  be  called  *great 
princes";  and  he  in  corroboration  of  his  view  read 
me  Sonnets  CXXIV  and  CXXV,  in  which  Shake- 
speare tells  us  that  his  love  is  not  'the  child  of  state," 
that  it  'suffers  not  in  smiling  pomp,"  but  is  'builded 
far  from  accident."  I  listened  with  a  good  deal  of 
interest,  for  I  don"t  think  the  point  had  ever  been 
made  before;  but  what  followed  was  still  more  cu' 
rious,  and  seemed  to  me  at  the  time  to  dispose  en' 
tirely  of  Pembroke"s  claim.  We  know  from  Meres 
that  the  Sonnets  had  been  written  before  1 598,  and 
Sonnet  CIV  informs  us  that  Shakespeare's  friend' 
ship  for  Mr  W.  H.  had  been  already  in  existence 


THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H.  1 3 

for  three  years.  Now  Lord  Pembroke,  who  was 
born  in  1580,  did  not  come  to  London  till  he  was 
eighteen  years  of  age,  that  is  to  say  till  1598,  and 
Shakespeare's  acquaintance  with  Mr  W.  H.  must 
have  begun  in  1 594,  or  at  the  latest  in  1 595.  Shake' 
speare,  accordingly,  could  not  have  known  Lord 
Pembroke  till  after  the  Sonnets  had  been  written. 
"Cyril  pointed  out  also  that  Pembroke's  father 
did  not  die  till  1601;  whereas  it  was  evident  from 
the  line, 

'You  had  a  father,  let  your  son  say  so,' 
that  the  father  of  Mr  W.  H.  was  dead  in  1598; 
and  laid  great  stress  on  the  evidence  afforded  by  the 
Wilton  portraits  which  represent  Lord  Pembroke 
as  a  swarthy  dark'haired  man,  while  Mr  W.  H.  was 
one  whose  hair  was  like  spun  gold,  and  whose  face 
the  meeting'place  for  the  'lily's  white'  and  the  'deep 
vermilion  in  the  rose';  being  himself 'fair,'  and  'red,' 
and  'white  and  red,'  and  of  beautiful  aspect.  Besides 
it  was  absurd  to  imagine  that  any  publisher  of  the 
time,  and  the  preface  is  from  the  publisher's  hand, 
would  have  dreamed  of  addressing  William  Her' 
bert.  Earl  of  Pembroke,  as  Mr  W.  H.;  the  case  of 


14  THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H. 

Lord  Buckhurst  being  spoken  of  as  Mr  Sackville 
being  not  really  a  parallel  instance,  as  Lord  Buck' 
hurst,  the  first  of  that  title,  was  plain  Mr  Sackville 
when  he  contributed  to  the  'Mirror  for  Magis' 
trates,'  while  Pembroke,  during  his  father's  lifetime, 
was  always  known  as  Lord  Herbert.  So  far  for  Lord 
Pembroke,  whose  supposed  claims  Cyril  easily  dc 
molished  while  I  sat  by  in  wonder.  With  Lord 
Southampton  Cyril  had  even  less  difficulty.  South' 
ampton  became  at  a  very  early  age  the  lover  of 
Elizabeth  Vernon,  so  he  needed  no  entreaties  to 
marry;  he  was  not  beautiful;  he  did  not  resemble 
his  mother,  as  Mr  W.  H.  did — 

*Thou  art  thy  mother's  glass,  and  she  in  thee 
Calls  back  the  lovely  April  of  her  prime'; 

and,  above  all,  his  Christian  name  was  Henry, 
whereas  the  punning  sonnets  (CXXXV  and 
CXLIII)  show  that  the  Christian  name  of  Shake 
speare's  friend  was  the  same  as  his  own — WiH. 

"As  for  the  other  suggestions  of  unfortunate 
commentators,  that  Mr  W.  H.  is  a  misprint  for  Mr 
W.  S.,  meaning  Mr  William  Shakespeare;  that 
'Mr  W.  H.  air  should  be  read  'Mr  W.  Hall';  that 


THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H.  1 5 

Mr  W.  H.  is  Mr  William  Hathaway;  that  Mr 
W.  H.  stands  for  Mr  Henry  Willobie,  the  young 
Oxford  poet,  with  the  initials  of  his  name  reversed; 
and  that  a  full  stop  should  be  placed  after 'wisheth/ 
making  Mr  W.  H.  the  writer  and  not  the  subject 
of  the  dedication,— Cyril  got  rid  of  them  in  a  very 
short  time;  and  it  is  not  worth  while  to  mention 
his  reasons,  though  I  remember  he  sent  me  off  into 
a  fit  of  laughter  by  reading  to  me,  I  am  glad  to  say 
not  in  the  original,  some  extracts  from  a  German 
commentator  called  Barnstorff,  who  insisted  that 
Mr  W.  H.  was  no  less  a  person  than  'Mr  William 
Himself  Nor  would  he  allow  for  a  moment  that 
the  Sonnets  are  mere  satires  on  the  work  of  Dray- 
ton and  John  Davies  of  Hereford.  To  him,  as  indeed 
to  me,  they  were  poems  of  serious  and  tragic  im- 
port,  wrung  out  of  the  bitterness  of  Shakespeare's 
heart,  and  made  sweet  by  the  honey  of  his  lips. 
Still  less  would  he  admit  that  they  were  merely  a 
philosophical  allegory,  and  that  in  them  Shake- 
speare  is  addressing  his  Ideal  Self,  or  Ideal  Man- 
hood, or  the  Spirit  of  Beauty,  or  the  Reason,  or  the 
Divine  Logos,  or  the  CathoUc  Church.  He  felt,  as 


1 6  THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H. 

indeed  I  think  we  all  must  feel,  that  the  Sonnets  are 
addressed  to  an  individual, — to  a  particular  young 
man  whose  personality  for  some  reason  seems  to 
have  filled  the  soul  of  Shakespeare  with  terrible 
joy  and  no  less  terrible  despair. 

"Having  in  this  manner  cleared  the  way,  as  it 
were,  Cyril  asked  me  to  dismiss  from  my  mind  any 
preconceived  ideas  I  might  have  formed  on  the  sub' 
ject,  and  to  give  a  fair  and  unbiased  hearing  to  his 
own  theory.  The  problem  he  pointed  out  was  this : 
Who  was  that  young  man  of  Shakespeare's  day 
who,  without  being  of  noble  birth  or  even  of  noble 
nature,  was  addressed  by  him  in  terms  of  such  pas' 
sionate  adoration  that  we  can  but  wonder  at  the 
strange  worship,  and  are  almost  afraid  to  turn  the 
key  that  unlocks  the  mystery  of  the  poet's  heart? 
Who  was  he  whose  physical  beauty  was  such  that 
it  became  the  very  corner-stone  of  Shakespeare's 
art;  the  very  source  of  Shakespeare's  inspiration; 
the  very  in'carnation  of  Shakespeare's  dreams?  To 
look  upon  him  as  simply  the  object  of  certain  love 
poems  was  to  miss  the  whole  meaning  of  the  poems: 
for  the  art  of  which  Shakespeare  talks  in  the  Son' 


THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H.  1 7 

nets  is  not  the  art  of  the  Sonnets  themselves,  which 
indeed  were  to  him  but  slight  and  secret  things- 
it  is  the  art  of  the  dramatist  to  which  he  is  always 
alluding ;  and  he  to  whom  Shakespeare  said — 

'Thou  art  all  my  art,  and  dost  advance 
As  high  as  learning  my  rude  ignorance,' — 

he  to  whom  he  promised  immortality, 

'Where  breath  most  breathes,  even  in  the 
mouths  of  men,' — 

he  who  was  to  him  the  tenth  'muse'  and 

'Ten  times  more  in  worth 
Than  those  old  nine  which  rhymers  invocate,' 

was  surely  none  other  than  the  boy 'actor  for  whom 
he  created  Viola  and  Imogen,  Juliet  and  Rosalind, 
Portia  and  Desdemona,  and  Cleopatra  herself." 

"The  boy 'actor  of  Shakespeare's  plays?"  I  cried. 

"Yes,"  said  Erskine.  "This  was  Cyril  Graham's 
theory,  evolved  as  you  see  purely  from  the  Sonnets 
themselves,  and  depending  for  its  acceptance  not 
so  much  on  demonstrable  proof  or  formal  evidence, 
but  on  a  kind  of  spiritual  and  artistic  sense,  by 
which  alone  he  claimed  could  the  true  meaning  of 


1 8  THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H. 

the  poems  be  discerned.  I  remember  his  reading  to 

me  that  fine  sonnet — 

'How  can  my  Muse  want  subject  to  invent, 
While  thou  dost  breathe,  that  pour  st  into  my 

verse 
Thine  own  sweet  argument,  too  excellent 
For  every  vulgar  paper  to  rehearse? 
O  give  thyself  the  thanks,  if  aught  in  me 
Worthy  perusal  stand  against  thy  sight; 
For  who's  so  dumb  that  cannot  write  to  thee, 
When  thou  thyself  dost  give  invention  light?' 

— and  pointing  out  how  completely  it  corroborated 
his  view;  and  indeed  he  went  through  all  the  Son' 
nets  carefully,  and  showed,  or  fancied  that  he 
showed,  that,  according  to  his  new  explanation  of 
their  meaning,  things  that  had  seemed  obscure,  or 
'  evil,  or  exaggerated,  became  clear  and  rational,  and 
of  high  artistic  import,  illustrating  Shakespeare's 
conception  of  the  true  relations  between  the  art  of 
the  actor  and  the  art  of  the  dramatist. 

"It  is  of  course  evident  that  there  must  have  been 
in  Shakespeare's  company  some  wonderful  boy 
actor  of  great  beauty,  to  whom  he  intrusted  the 
presentation  of  his  noble  heroines;  for  Shakespeare 


THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H.  1 9 

was  a  practical  theatrical  manager  as  well  as  an  im" 
aginative  poet;  and  Cyril  Graham  had  actually  dis- 
covered the  boyactor's  name.  He  was  Will,  or,  as 
he  preferred  to  call  him,  Willie  Hughes.  The  Chris' 
tian  name  he  found  of  course  in  the  punning 
sonnets,  CXXXV  and  CXLIII;  the  surname  was, 
according  to  him,  hidden  in  the  eighth  line  of  Son- 
net XX,  where  Mr  W.  H.  is  described  as — 
'A  man  in  hew,  all  Hews  in  his  controwling.' 
"In  the  original  edition  of  the  Sonnets  'Hews'  is 
printed  with  a  capital  letter  and  in  italics,  and  this, 
he  claimed,  showed  clearly  that  a  play  on  words 
was  intended,  his  view  receiving  a  good  deal  of  cor- 
roboration from  those  sonnets  in  which  curious 
puns  are  made  on  the  words  *use'  and  'usury,'  and 
from  such  lines  as — 

'Thou  art  as  fair  in  knowledge  as  in  hew.' 
Of  course  I  was  converted  at  once,  and  Willie 
Hughes  became  to  me  as  real  a  person  as  Shake- 
speare. The  only  objection  I  made  to  the  theory  was 
that  the  name  of  Willie  Hughes  does  not  occur  in 
the  list  of  the  actors  of  Shakespeare's  company  as  it 
is  printed  in  the  first  folio.  Cyril,  however,  pointed 


20  THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H. 

out  that  the  absence  of  Willie  Hughes'  name  from 
this  list  really  corroborated  the  theory,  as  it  was 
evident  from  Sonnet  LXXXVI,  that  he  had  aban' 
doned  Shakespeare's  company  to  play  at  a  rival 
theatre,  probably  in  some  of  Chapman's  plays.  It 
was  in  reference  to  this  that  in  the  great  sonnet  on 
Chapman  Shakespeare  said  to  Willie  Hughes — • 

'But  when  your  countenance  filled  up  his  line, 
Then  lacked  I  matter;  that  enfeebled  mine' — 

the  expression  'when  your  countenance  filled  up 
his  line'  referring  clearly  to  the  beauty  of  the  young 
actor  giving  life  and  reality  and  added  charm  to 
Chapman's  verse,  the  same  idea  being  also  put  for' 
ward  in  Sonnet  LXXIX: 

'Whilst  I  alone  did  call  upon  thy  aid, 
My  verse  alone  had  all  thy  gentle  grace, 
But  now  my  gracious  numbers  are  decayed, 
And  my  sick  Muse  doth  give  another  place'; 

and  in  the  immediately  preceding  sonnet,  where 
Shakespeare  says, 

'Every  alien  pen  hath  got  my  use 
And  under  thee  their  poesy  disperse,' 

the  play  upon  words  (use  =  Hughes)  being  of 


THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H.  21 

course  obvious,  and  the  phrase,  'under  thee  their 
poesy  disperse,'  meaning  'by  your  assistance  as  an 
actor  bring  their  plays  before  the  people/ 

*'It  was  a  wonderful  evening,  and  we  sat  up  al' 
most  till  dawn  reading  and  rc'reading  the  Sonnets. 
After  some  time,  however,  I  began  to  see  that  be 
fore  the  theory  could  be  placed  before  the  world  in 
a  really  perfected  form,  it  was  necessary  to  get  some 
independent  evidence  about  the  existence  of  this 
young  actor,  Willie  Hughes.  If  this  could  be  once 
established,  there  could  be  no  possible  doubt  about 
his  identity  with  Mr  W.  H.;  but  otherwise  the 
theory  would  fall  to  the  ground.  I  put  this  forward 
very  strongly  to  Cyril,  who  was  a  good  deal  an^ 
noyed  at  what  he  called  my  Philistine  tone  of  mind, 
and  indeed  was  rather  bitter  upon  the  subject. 
However,  I  made  him  promise  that  in  his  own  in' 
terest  he  would  not  publish  his  discovery  till  he  had 
put  the  whole  matter  beyond  the  reach  of  doubt; 
and  for  weeks  and  weeks  we  searched  the  registers 
of  City  churches,  the  Alleyn  MSS.  at  Dulwich,  the 
Record  Office,  the  books  of  the  Lord  Chamberlain 
— everything,  in  fact,  that  we  thought  might  con- 


22  THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H. 

tain  some  allusion  to  Willie  Hughes.  We  discov 
ered  nothing,  of  course,  and  each  day  the  existence 
of  Willie  Hughes  seemed  to  me  to  become  more 
problematical.  Cyril  was  in  a  dreadful  state,  and 
used  to  go  over  the  whole  question  again  and  again, 
entreating  me  to  believe;  but  I  saw  the  one  flaw  in 
the  theory,  and  I  refused  to  be  convinced  till  the 
actual  existence  of  Willie  Hughes,  a  boyactor  of 
the  Elizabethan  stage,  had  been  placed  beyond  the 
reach  of  doubt  or  cavil. 

"One  day  Cyril  left  town  to  stay  with  his  grand' 
father,  I  thought  at  the  time,  but  I  afterwards  heard 
from  Lord  Crediton  that  this  was  not  the  case;  and 
about  a  fortnight  afterwards  I  received  a  telegram 
from  him,  handed  in  at  Warwick,  asking  me  to  be 
sure  to  come  and  dine  with  him  in  his  chambers, 
that  evening  at  eight  o'clock.  When  I  arrived,  he 
said  to  me,  'The  only  apostle  who  did  not  deserve 
proof  was  St.  Thomas,  and  St.  Thomas  was  the 
only  apostle  who  got  it.'  I  asked  him  what  he 
meant.  He  answered  that  he  had  been  able  not 
merely  to  establish  the  existence  in  the  sixteenth 
century  of  a  boyactor  of  the  name  of  Willie 


THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H.  23 

Hughes,  but  to  prove  by  the  most  conclusive  evi' 
dence  that  he  was  the  Mr  W.  H.  of  the  Sonnets. 
He  would  not  tell  me  anything  more  at  the  time; 
but  after  dinner  he  solemnly  produced  the  picture 
I  showed  you,  and  told  me  that  he  had  discovered 
it  by  the  merest  chance  nailed  to  the  side  of  an  old 
chest  that  he  had  bought  at  a  farmhouse  in  War' 
wickshire.  The  chest  itself,  which  was  a  very  fine 
example  of  Eli2,abethan  work,  and  thoroughly  au' 
thentic,  he  had,  of  course,  brought  with  him,  and 
in  the  centre  of  the  front  panel  the  initials  W.  H. 
were  undoubtedly  carved.  It  was  this  monogram 
that  had  attracted  his  attention,  and  he  told  me 
that  it  was  not  till  he  had  had  the  chest  in  his  pos^ 
session  for  several  days  that  he  had  thought  of 
making  any  careful  examination  of  the  inside.  One 
morning,  however,  he  saw  that  the  right'hand 
side  of  the  chest  was  much  thicker  than  the  other, 
and  looking  more  closely,  he  discovered  that  a 
framed  panel  was  clamped  against  it.  On  taking  it 
out,  he  found  it  was  the  picture  that  is  now  lying 
on  the  sofa.  It  was  very  dirty,  and  covered  with 
mould;  but  he  managed  to  clean  it,  and,  to  his  great 


24  THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H. 

joy,  saw  that  he  had  fallen  by  mere  chance  on  the 
one  thing  for  which  he  had  been  looking.  Here 
was  an  authentic  portrait  of  Mr  W.  H.  with  his 
hand  resting  on  the  dedicatory  page  of  the  Sonnets, 
and  on  the  corner  of  the  picture  could  be  faintly 
seen  the  name  of  the  young  man  himself  written  in 
gold  uncial  letters  on  the  faded  hleu  de  paon  ground, 
*Master  Will  Hews; 

"Well,  what  was  I  to  say?  It  is  quite  clear  from 
Sonnet  XL VII  that  Shakespeare  had  a  portrait  of 
Mr  W.  H.  in  his  possession,  and  it  seemed  to  me 
more  than  probable  that  here  we  had  the  very 
'painted  banquet'  on  which  he  invited  his  eye  to 
feast;  the  actual  picture  that  awoke  his  heart  'to 
heart's  and  eye's  delight.'  It  never  occurred  to  me 
for  a  moment  that  Cyril  Graham  was  playing  a 
trick  on  me,  or  that  he  was  trying  to  prove  his 
theory  by  means  of  a  forgery." 

"But  is  it  a  forgery?"  I  asked. 

"Of  course  it  is,"  said  Erskine.  "It  is  a  very  good 
forgery;  but  it  is  a  forgery  none  the  less.  I  thought 
at  the  time  that  Cyril  was  rather  calm  about  the 
whole  matter;  but  I  remember  he  kept  telling  me 


THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H.  I'y 

that  he  himself  required  no  proof  of  the  kind,  and 
that  he  thought  the  theory  complete  without  it.  I 
laughed  at  him,  and  told  him  that  without  it  the 
entire  theory  would  fall  to  the  ground,  and  I 
warmly  congratulated  him  on  his  marvellous  dis- 
covery. We  then  arranged  that  the  picture  should 
be  etched  or  facsimiled,  and  placed  as  the  frontis' 
piece  to  Cyril's  edition  of  the  Sonnets;  and  for 
three  months  we  did  nothing  but  go  over  each 
poem  line  by  line,  till  w^e  had  settled  every  diili' 
culty  of  text  or  meaning.  One  unlucky  day  I  was 
in  a  print'shop  in  Holborn,  when  I  saw  upon  the 
counter  some  extremely  beautiful  drawings  in  sil' 
ver-point.  I  was  so  attracted  by  them  that  I  bought 
them;  and  the  proprietor  of  the  place,  a  man  called 
Rawlings,  told  me  that  they  were  done  by  a  young 
painter  of  the  name  of  Edward  Merton,  who  was 
very  clever,  but  as  poor  as  a  church  mouse.  I  went 
to  see  Merton  some  days  afterwards,  having  got 
his  address  from  the  print-seller,  and  found  a  pale, 
interesting  young  man,  with  a  rather  common-look- 
ing wife, — his  model,  as  I  subsequently  learned.  I 
told  him  how  much  I  admired  his  drawings,  at 


26  THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H. 

which  he  seemed  very  pleased,  and  I  asked  him  if 
he  would  show  me  some  of  his  other  work.  As  we 
were  looking  over  a  portfolio,  full  of  really  very 
lovely  things, — for  Merton  had  a  most  delicate  and 
delightful  touch, — I  suddenly  caught  sight  of  a 
drawing  of  the  picture  of  Mr  W.  H.  There  was 
no  doubt  whatever  about  it.  It  was  almost  a  fac' 
simile, — the  only  difference  being  that  the  two 
masks  of  Tragedy  and  Comedy  were  not  lying  on 
the  floor  at  the  young  man's  feet,  as  they  were  in 
the  picture,  but  were  suspended  by  gilt  ribands. 
'Where  on  earth  did  you  get  that?'  I  asked.  He  grew 
rather  confused,  and  said, — 'Oh,  that  is  nothing.  I 
did  not  know  it  was  in  this  portfolio.  It  is  not  a 
thing  of  any  value.'  'It  is  what  you  did  for  Mr  Cyril 
Graham,'  exclaimed  his  wife;  'and  if  this  gentleman 
wishes  to  buy  it,  let  him  have  it.'  'For  Mr  Cyril 
Graham?'  I  repeated.  'Did  you  paint  the  picture  of 
Mr  W.  H.?'  'I  don't  understand  what  you  mean,' 
he  answered,  growing  very  red.  Well,  the  whole 
thing  was  quite  dreadful.  The  wife  let  it  all  out. 
I  gave  her  five  pounds  when  I  was  going  away.  I 
can't  bear  to  think  of  it,  now;  but  of  course  I  was 


THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H.  27 

furious.  I  went  off  at  once  to  Cyril's  chambers, 
waited  there  for  three  hours  before  he  came  in,  with 
that  horrid  He  staring  me  in  the  face,  and  told  him 
I  had  discovered  his  forgery.  He  grew  very  pale, 
and  said, — 'I  did  it  purely  for  your  sake.  You  would 
not  be  convinced  in  any  other  way.  It  does  not 
affect  the  truth  of  the  theory.'  'The  truth  of  the 
theory!'  I  exclaimed;  'the  less  we  talk  about  that 
the  better.  You  never  even  believed  in  it  yourself. 
If  you  had,  you  would  not  have  committed  a  for' 
gery  to  prove  it.'  High  words  passed  between  us; 
we  had  a  fearful  quarrel.  I  daresay  I  was  unjust, 
and  the  next  morning  he  was  dead." 

"Dead!"  I  cried. 

"Yes,  he  shot  himself  with  a  revolver.  By  the 
time  I  arrived, — his  servant  had  sent  for  me  at 
once, — the  police  were  already  there.  He  had  left 
a  letter  for  me,  evidently  written  in  the  greatest 
agitation  and  distress  of  mind." 

"What  was  in  it?"  I  asked. 

"Oh,  that  he  believed  absolutely  in  Willie 
Hughes;  that  the  forgery  of  the  picture  had  been 
done  simply  as  a  concession  to  me,  and  did  not  in  the 


28  THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H. 

slightest  degree  invalidate  the  truth  of  the  theory; 
and  that  in  order  to  show  me  how  j&rm  and  flaw 
less  his  faith  in  the  whole  thing  was,  he  was  going 
to  offer  his  life  as  a  sacrifice  to  the  secret  of  the  Son^ 
nets.  It  was  a  foolish,  mad  letter.  I  remember  he 
ended  by  saying  that  he  intrusted  to  me  the  Willie 
Hughes  theory,  and  that  it  was  for  me  to  present 
it  to  the  world,  and  to  unlock  the  secret  of  Shake 
speare's  heart."" 

"It  is  a  most  tragic  story,"  I  cried,  "but  why  have 
you  not  carried  out  his  wishes?" 

Erskine  shrugged  his  shoulders.  "Because  it  is  a 
perfectly  unsound  theory  from  beginning  to  end," 
he  answered. 

"My  dear  Erskine,"  I  exclaimed,  getting  up  from 
my  seat,  "you  are  entirely  wrong  about  the  whole 
matter.  It  is  the  only  perfect  key  to  Shakespeare's 
Sonnets  that  has  ever  been  made.  It  is  complete  in 
every  detail.  I  believe  in  Willie  Hughes." 

"Don't  say  that,"  said  Erskine,  gravely;  "I  believe 
there  is  something  fatal  about  the  idea,  and  intel' 
lectually  there  is  nothing  to  be  said  for  it.  I  have 
gone  into  the  whole  matter,  and  I  assure  you  the 


THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H.  29 

theory  is  entirely  fallacious.  It  is  plausible  up  to  a 
certain  point.  Then  it  stops.  For  heaven  s  sake,  my 
dear  boy,  don't  take  up  the  subject  of  Willie  Hughes. 
You  will  break  your  heart  over  it." 

"Erskine,"  I  answered,  "it  is  your  duty  to  give 
this  theory  to  the  world.  If  you  will  not  do  it,  I 
will.  By  keeping  it  back  you  wrong  the  memory  of 
Cyril  Graham,  the  youngest  and  the  most  splendid 
of  all  the  martyrs  of  Uterature.  I  entreat  you  to  do 
him  this  bare  act  of  justice.  He  died  for  this  thing, — 
don't  let  his  death  be  in  vain." 

Erskine  looked  at  me  in  amazement.  "You  are 
carried  away  by  the  sentiment  of  the  whole  story," 
he  said.  "You  forget  that  a  thing  is  not  necessarily 
true  because  a  man  dies  for  it.  I  was  devoted  to 
Cyril  Graham.  His  death  was  a  horrible  blow  to  me. 
I  did  not  recover  from  it  for  years.  I  don't  think  I 
have  ever  recovered  from  it.  But  Willie  Hughes! 
There  is  nothing  in  the  idea  of  Willie  Hughes.  No 
such  person  ever  existed.  As  for  bringing  the  mat' 
ter  before  the  world, — the  world  thinks  that  Cyril 
Graham  shot  himself  by  accident.  The  only  proof 
of  his  suicide  was  contained  in  the  letter  to  me,  and 


30  THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H. 

of  this  letter  the  public  never  heard  anything.  To 
the  present  day  Lord  Crediton  is  under  the  impres' 
sion  that  the  whole  thing  was  accidental." 

"Cyril  Graham  sacrificed  his  life  to  a  great  idea," 
I  answered;  "and  if  you  will  not  tell  of  his  martyr' 
dom,  tell  at  least  of  his  faith." 

"His  faith,"  said  Erskine,  "was  fixed  in  a  thing 
that  was  false,  in  a  thing  that  was  unsound,  in  a 
thing  that  no  Shakespearian  scholar  would  accept 
for  a  moment.  The  theory  would  be  laughed  at. 
Don't  make  a  fool  of  yourself,  and  don"'t  follow  a 
trail  that  leads  nowhere.  You  start  by  assuming 
the  existence  of  the  very  person  whose  existence  is 
the  thing  to  be  proved.  Besides,  everybody  knows 
that  the  Sonnets  were  addressed  to  Lord  Pembroke. 
The  matter  is  settled  once  for  all." 

"The  matter  is  not  settled,"  I  exclaimed.  "I  will 
take  up  the  theory  where  Cyril  Graham  left  it,  and 
I  will  prove  to  the  world  that  he  was  right." 

"Silly  boy!"  said  Erskine.  "Go  home,  it  is  after 
three,  and  don't  think  about  Willie  Hughes  any 
more.  I  am  sorry  I  told  you  anything  about  it,  and 


THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H.  3 1 

very  sorry  indeed  that  I  should  have  converted 
you  to  a  thing  in  which  I  don't  believe." 

"You  have  given  me  the  key  to  the  greatest  mys' 
tery  of  modern  literature,"  I  answered;  "and  I  will 
not  rest  till  I  have  made  you  recognise,  till  I  have 
made  everybody  recognise,  that  Cyril  Graham 
was  the  most  subtle  Shakespearian  critic  of  our 
day." 

I  was  about  to  leave  the  room  when  Erskine 
called  me  back.  "My  dear  fellow,"  he  said,  "let  me 
advise  you  not  to  waste  your  time  over  the  Son' 
nets.  I  am  quite  serious.  After  all,  what  do  they 
tell  us  about  Shakespeare?  Simply  that  he  was  the 
slave  of  beauty." 

"Well,  that  is  the  condition  of  being  an  artist!" 
I  replied. 

There  was  a  strange  silence  for  a  few  moments. 
Then  Erskine  got  up,  and  looking  at  me  with  half 
closed  eyes,  said,  "Ah!  how  you  remind  me  of  Cyril! 
He  used  to  say  just  that  sort  of  thing  to  me."  He 
tried  to  smile,  but  there  was  a  note  of  poignant  pa' 
thos  in  his  voice  that  I  remember  to  the  present  day, 
as  one  remembers  the  tone  of  a  particular  violin  that 


32  THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H. 

has  charmed  one,  the  touch  of  a  particular  woman's 

hand.  The  great  events  of  life  often  leave  one  un' 

moved;  they  pass  out  of  consciousness,  and,  when 

one  thinks  of  them,  become  unreal.  Even  the  scar" 

let  flowers  of  passion  seem  to  grow  in  the  same 

meadow  as  the  poppies  of  obHvion.  We  reject  the 

burden  of  their  memory,  and  have  anodynes  against 

them.  But  the  little  things,  the  things  of  no  mo' 

ment,  remain  with  us.  In  some  tiny  ivory  cell  the 

brain  stores  the  most  deHcate,  and  the  most  fleeting 
impressions. 

As  I  walked  home  through  St.  James's  Park,  the 
dawn  was  just  breaking  over  London.  The  swans 
were  lying  asleep  on  the  smooth  surface  of  the  pol' 
ished  lake,  like  white  feathers  fallen  upon  a  mirror 
of  black  steel.  The  gaunt  Palace  looked  purple 
against  the  pale  green  sky,  and  in  the  garden  of  Staf- 
ford House  the  birds  were  just  beginning  to  sing.  I 
thought  of  Cyril  Graham,  and  my  eyes  filled  with 
tears. 


II 

It  was  past  twelve  o'clock  when  I  awoke,  and 
the  sun  was  streaming  in  through  the  curtains  of 
my  room  in  long  dusty  beams  of  tremulous  gold.  I 
told  my  servant  that  I  would  not  be  at  home  to 
any  one,  and  after  I  had  discussed  a  cup  of  choco- 
late and  a  petiPpain,  I  took  out  of  the  Hbrary  my 
copy  of  Shakespeare's  Sonnets,  and  Mr  Tyler  s  fac 
simile  edition  of  the  Quarto,  and  began  to  go  care- 
fully  through  them.  Each  poem  seemed  to  me  to 
corroborate  Cyril  Graham's  theory.  I  felt  as  if  I 
had  my  hand  upon  Shakespeare's  heart,  and  was 
counting  each  separate  throb  and  pulse  of  passion. 
I  thought  of  the  wonderful  boy- actor,  and  saw  his 
face  in  every  line. 

Previous  to  this,  in  my  Lord  Pembroke  days,  if  I 
may  so  term  them,  I  must  admit  that  it  had  always 
seemed  to  me  very  difficult  to  understand  how  the 
creator  of  Hamlet  and  Lear  and  Othello  could  have 
addressed  in  such  extravagant  terms  of  praise  and 


34  THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H. 

passion  one  who  was  merely  an  ordinary  young 
nobleman  of  the  day.  Along  with  most  students 
of  Shakespeare,  I  had  found  myself  compelled  to 
set  the  Sonnets  apart  as  things  quite  alien  to  Shake' 
speare's  development  as  a  dramatist,  as  things  pos' 
sibly  unworthy  of  the  intellectual  side  of  his  nature. 
But  now  that  I  began  to  realise  the  truth  of  Cyril 
Graham's  theory,  I  saw  that  the  moods  and  pas- 
sions they  mirrored  were  absolutely  essential  to 
Shakespeare's  perfection  as  an  artist  writing  for  the 
Elizabethan  stage,  and  that  it  was  in  the  curious 
theatric  conditions  of  that  stage  that  the  poems 
themselves  had  their  origin.  I  remember  what  joy 
I  had  in  feeling  that  these  wonderful  Sonnets, 

"Subtle  as  Sphinx;  as  sweet  and  musical 
As  bright  Apollo's  lute,  strung  with  his  hair," 

were  no  longer  isolated  from  the  great  aesthetic 
energies  of  Shakespeare's  life,  but  were  an  essential 
part  of  his  dramatic  activity,  and  revealed  to  us 
something  of  the  secret  of  his  method.  To  have 
discovered  the  true  name  of  Mr  W.  H.  was  com- 
paratively  nothing:  others  might  have  done  that. 


THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H.  35 

had  perhaps  done  it:  but  to  have  discovered  his 
profession  was  a  revolution  in  criticism. 

Two  sonnets,  I  remember,  struck  me  particu' 
larly.  In  the  first  of  these  (LIII)  Shakespeare,  com' 
plimenting  Willie  Hughes  on  the  versatility  of  his 
acting,  on  his  wide  range  of  parts,  a  range  extend' 
ing,  as  we  know,  from  Rosalind  to  Juliet,  and  from 
Beatrice  to  Ophelia,  says  to  him: — 

"What  is  your  substance,  whereof  are  you  made. 
That  millions  of  strange  shadows  on  you  tend? 
Since  every  one  hath,  every  one,  one  shade. 
And  you,  but  one,  can  every  shadow  lend"— 

lines  that  would  be  unintelligible  if  they  were  not 
addressed  to  an  actor,  for  the  word  "shadow"  had 
in  Shakespeare's  day  a  technical  meaning  connected 
with  the  stage.  "The  best  in  this  kind  are  but 
shadows,"  says  Theseus  of  the  actors  in  the  "Mid' 
summer  Night's  Dream"; 

"Life's  but  a  walking  shadow,  and  poor  player 
That  struts  and  frets  his  hour  upon  the  stage," 

cries  Macbeth  in  the  moment  of  his  despair,  and 
there  are  many  similar  allusions  in  the  literature  of 
the  day.  This  sonnet  evidently  belonged  to  the 


36  THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H. 

series  in  which  Shakespeare  discusses  the  nature  of 
the  actor's  art,  and  of  the  strange  and  rare  temper' 
ament  that  is  essential  to  the  perfect  stagC'player. 
"How  is  it,''  says  Shakespeare  to  Willie  Hughes, 
"that  you  have  so  many  personalities?"  and  then  he 
goes  on  to  point  out  that  his  beauty  is  such  that  it 
seems  to  reaHse  every  form  and  phase  of  fancy,  to 
embody  each  dream  of  the  creative  imagination, — 
an  idea  that  is  still  further  expanded  in  the  sonnet 
that  immediately  follows,  where,  beginning  with 
the  fine  thought, 

"O,  how  much  more  doth  beauty  beauteous  seem 
By  that  sweet  ornament  which  truth  doth  give!" 

Shakespeare  invites  us  to  notice  how  the  truth  of 
acting,  the  truth  of  visible  presentation  on  the  stage, 
adds  to  the  wonder  of  poetry,  giving  Hfe  to  its  love 
liness,  and  actual  reality  to  its  ideal  form.  And  yet, 
in  Sonnet  LXVII,  Shakespeare  calls  upon  Willie 
Hughes  to  abandon  the  stage  with  its  artificiality, 
its  unreal  life  of  painted  face  and  mimic  costume,  its 
immoral  influences  and  suggestions,  its  remoteness 
from  the  true  world  of  noble  action  and  sincere  ut- 
terance. 


THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H.  37 

"Ah,  wherefore  with  infection  should  he  live, 
And  with  his  presence  grace  impiety, 
That  sin  by  him  advantage  should  receive. 
And  lace  itself  with  his  society? 
Why  should  false  painting  imitate  his  cheek, 
And  steal  dead  seeing  of  his  living  hue? 
Why  should  poor  beauty  indirectly  seek 
Roses  of  shadow,  since  his  rose  is  true?" 

It  may  seem  strange  that  so  great  a  dramatist  as 
Shakespeare,  who  realised  his  own  perfection  as  an 
artist  and  his  full  humanity  as  a  man  on  the  ideal 
plane  of  stagcwriting  and  stagcplaying,  should 
have  written  in  these  terms  about  the  theatre;  but 
we  must  remember  that  in  Sonnets  CX  and  CXI, 
Shakespeare  shows  us  that  he  too  was  wearied  of 
the  world  of  puppets,  and  full  of  shame  at  having 
made  himself  "a  motley  to  the  view."  Sonnet  CXI 
is  especially  bitter: — 

"O,  for  my  sake  do  you  with  Fortune  chide. 
The  guilty  goddess  of  my  harmful  deeds. 
That  did  not  better  for  my  life  provide 
Than  public  means  which  public  manners 

breeds. 
Thence  comes  it  that  my  name  receives  a  brand, 


462041 


38  THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H. 

And  almost  thence  my  nature  is  subdued 
To  what  it  works  in,  like  the  dyer's  hand: 
Pity  me,  then,  and  wish  I  were  renewed" — 

and  there  are  many  signs  of  the  same  feeling  else' 
where,  signs  familiar  to  all  real  students  of  Shake' 
speare. 

One  point  puzzled  me  immensely  as  I  read  the 
Sonnets,  and  it  was  days  before  I  struck  on  the  true 
interpretation,  which  indeed  Cyril  Graham  him' 
self  seemed  to  have  missed.  I  could  not  understand 
how  it  was  that  Shakespeare  set  so  high  a  value  on 
his  young  friend  marrying.  He  himself  had  married 
young  and  the  result  had  been  unhappiness,  and  it 
was  not  likely  that  he  would  have  asked  Willie 
Hughes  to  commit  the  same  error.  The  boy 'player 
of  Rosalind  had  nothing  to  gain  from  marriage,  or 
from  the  passions  of  real  life.  The  early  sonnets 
with  their  strange  entreaties  to  love  children 
seemed  to  be  a  jarring  note. 

The  explanation  of  the  mystery  came  on  me  quite 
suddenly  and  I  found  it  in  the  curious  dedication. 
It  will  be  remembered  that  this  dedication  was  as 
follows: — 


THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H.  39 

"TO .  THE .  ONLIE .  BEGETTER .  OF . 

THESE .  INSUING .  SONNETS . 

MR.W.H.  ALL .  HAPPINESSE . 

AND .  THAT .  ETERNITIE . 

PROMISED .  BY . 

OUR .  EVER-LIVING .  POET. 

WISHETH . 

THE .  WELL-WISHING . 

ADVENTURER .  IN . 

SETTING . 

FORTH. 

T.  T ." 
Some  scholars  have  supposed  that  the  word 
"begetter"  here  means  simply  the  procurer  of  the 
Sonnets  for  Thomas  Thorpe  the  publisher;  but  this 
view  is  now  generally  abandoned,  and  the  highest 
authorities  are  quite  agreed  that  it  is  to  be  taken  in 
the  sense  of  inspirer,  the  metaphor  being  drawn  from 
the  analogy  of  physical  life.  Now  I  saw  that  the  same 
metaphor  was  used  by  Shakespeare  himself  all 
through  the  poems,  and  this  set  me  on  the  right 
track.  Finally  I  made  my  great  discovery.  The  mar- 
riage that  Shakespeare  proposes  for  Willie  Hughes 


40  THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H. 

is  the  "marriage  with  hisMuse,"an  expression  which 

is  definitely  put  forward  in  Sonnet  LXXXII  where, 

in  the  bitterness  of  his  heart  at  the  defection  of  the 

boyactor  for  whom  he  had  written  his  greatest 

parts,  and  whose  beauty  had  indeed  suggested 

them,  he  opens  his  complaint  by  saying — 

"I  grant  thou  wert  not  married  to  my  Muse." 

The  children  he  begs  him  to  beget  are  no  children 

of  flesh  and  blood,  but  more  immortal  children  of 

undying  fame.  The  whole  cycle  of  the  early  sonnets 

is  simply  Shakespeare's  invitation  to  Willie  Hughes 

to  go  upon  the  stage  and  become  a  player.  How 

barren  and  profitless  a  thing,  he  says,  is  this  beauty 

of  yours  if  it  be  not  used: 

"When  forty  winters  shall  besiege  thy  brow. 
And  dig  deep  trenches  in  thy  beauty's  field, 
Thy  youth's  proud  hvery,  so  gazed  on  now, 
Will  be  a  tattered  weed,  of  small  worth  held: 
Then  being  asked  where  all  thy  beauty  lies, 
Where  all  the  treasure  of  thy  lusty  days, 
To  say,  within  thine  own  deep'sunken  eyes, 
Were  an  all^eating  shame  and  thriftless  praise." 

You  must  create  something  in  art:  my  verse  "is 

thine  and  horn  of  thee";  only  listen  to  me,  and  I  will 


THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H.  4I 

''bring  forth  eternal  numbers  to  outlive  long  date," 
and  you  shall  people  with  forms  of  your  own  image 
the  imaginary  world  of  the  stage.  These  children 
that  you  beget,  he  continues,  will  not  wither  away, 
as  mortal  children  do,  but  you  shall  live  in  them  and 
in  my  plays :  do  but — 

"Make  thee  another  self,  for  love  of  me, 
That  beauty  still  may  hve  in  thine  or  thee!" 

Be  not  afraid  to  surrender  your  personality,  to  give 
your  "semblance  to  some  other": 

"To  give  away  yourself  keeps  yourself  still, 
And  you  must  Hve,  drawn  by  your  own  sweet 
skill" 

I  may  not  be  learned  in  astrology,  and  yet,  in  those 
"constant  stars"  your  eyes, 

"  I  read  such  art 
As  truth  and  beauty  shall  together  thrive, 
If  from  thyself  to  store  thou  wouldst  convert." 

What  does  it  matter  about  others? 

"Let  those  whom  Nature  hath  not  made  for 

store, 
Harsh,  featureless,  and  rude,  barrenly  perish": 

With  you  it  is  different,  Nature — 


42  THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H. 

"carv'd  thee  for  her  seal,  and  meant  thereby 
Thou  shouldst  print  more,  nor  let  that  copy 
die." 

Remember,  too,  how  soon  Beauty  forsakes  itself 
Its  action  is  no  stronger  than  a  flower,  and  like  a 
flower  it  lives  and  dies.  Think  of  "the  stormy  gusts 
of  winter  s  day,"  of  the  "barren  edge  of  Death's 
eternal  cold,"  and — 

"ere  thou  be  distilled. 
Make  sweet  some  vial;  treasure  thou  some 
place 
.    With  beauty's  treasure,  ere  it  be  self'killed." 

Why,  even  flowers  do  not  altogether  die.  When 
roses  wither, 

"Of  their  sweet  deaths  are  sweetest  odours 
made": 

and  you  who  are  "my  rose"  should  not  pass  away 
without  leaving  your  form  in  Art.  For  Art  has  the 
very  secret  of  joy. 

"Ten  times  thyself  were  happier  than  thou  art, 
If  ten  of  thine  ten  times  refigur'd  thee." 

You  do  not  require  the  "bastard  signs  of  fair,"  the 
painted  face,  the  fantastic  disguises  of  other  actors: 


THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H.  43 

"...  the  golden  tresses  of  the  dead. 
The  right  of  sepulchres," 

need  not  be  shorn  away  for  you.  In  you — 

** .  .  those  holy  antique  hours  are  seen, 
Without  all  ornament,  itself  and  true, 
Making  no  summer  of  another  s  green." 

All  that  is  necessary  is  to  "copy  what  in  you  is 
writ";  to  place  you  on  the  stage  as  you  are  in  actual 
life.  All  those  ancient  poets  who  have  written  of 
"ladies  dead  and  lovely  knights"  have  been  dream' 
ing  of  such  a  one  as  you,  and — 

"All  their  praises  are  but  prophecies 
Of  this  our  time,  all  you  prefiguring." 

For  your  beauty  seems  to  belong  to  all  ages  and  to 
all  lands.  Your  shade  comes  to  visit  me  at  night, 
but,  I  want  to  look  upon  your  "shadow"  in  the 
living  day,  I  want  to  see  you  upon  the  stage.  Mere 
description  of  you  will  not  suffice: 

"If  I  could  write  the  beauty  of  your  eyes, 
And  in  fresh  numbers  number  all  your  graces. 
The  age  to  come  would  say, 'This  poet  lies; 
Such  heavenly  touches  ne'er  touched  earthly 
races. 


44  THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H. 

It  is  necessary  that  "some  child  of  yours,"  some  ar^ 
tistic  creation  that  embodies  you,  and  to  which 
your  imagination  gives  life,  shall  present  you  to  the 
world's  wondering  eyes.  Your  own  thoughts  are 
your  children,  offspring  of  sense  and  spirit;  give 
some  expression  to  them,  and  you  shall  find — 

"Those  children  nursed,  delivered  from  thy 
brain/' 

My  thoughts,  also,  are  my  "children."  They  are  of 
your  begetting  and  my  brain  is— 

"the  womb  wherein  they  grew." 
For  this  great  friendship  of  ours  is  indeed  a  mar^ 
riage,  it  is  the  "marriage  of  true  minds." 

I  collected  together  all  the  passages  that  seemed 
to  me  to  corroborate  this  view,  and  they  produced 
a  strong  impression  on  me,  and  showed  me  how 
complete  Cyril  Graham's  theory  really  was.  I  also 
saw  that  it  ^vas  quite  easy  to  separate  those  lines 
in  which  Shakespeare  speaks  of  the  Sonnets  them- 
selves, from  those  in  which  he  speaks  of  his  great 
dramatic  work.  This  was  a  point  that  had  been  en- 
tirely  overlooked  by  all  critics  up  to  Cyril  Graham's 
day.  And  yet  it  was  one  of  the  most  important  in 


THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H.  45 

the  whole  series  of  poems.  To  the  Sonnets  Shake- 
speare was  more  or  less  indiiFerent.  He  did  not  wish 
to  rest  his  fame  on  them.  They  were  to  him  his 
"slight  Muse,"  as  he  calls  them,  and  intended,  as 
Meres  tells  us,  for  private  circulation  only  among 
a  few,  a  very  few,  friends.  Upon  the  other  hand 
he  was  extremely  conscious  of  the  high  artistic 
value  of  his  plays,  and  shows  a  noble  self-reliance 
upon  his  dramatic  genius.  When  he  says  to  Willie 
Hughes: 

"But  thy  eternal  summer  shall  not  fade, 
Nor  lose  possession  of  that  fair  thou  owest; 
Nor  shall  Death  brag  thou  wander'st  in  his 

shade. 
When  in  eternal  lines  to  time  thou  growest: 
So  long  as  men  can  breathe  or  eyes  can  see. 
So  long  lives  this  and  this  gives  life  to  thee"; — 

the  expression  "eternal  lines"  clearly  alludes  to  one 
of  his  plays  that  he  was  sending  him  at  the  time, 
just  as  the  concluding  couplet  points  to  his  confi- 
dence in  the  probability  of  his  plays  being  always 
acted.  In  his  address  to  the  Dramatic  Muse  (Son- 
nets C  and  CI)  we  find  the  same  feeling. 


46  THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H. 

"Where  art  thou,  Muse,  that  thou  forget' st 

so  long 
To  speak  of  that  which  gives  thee  all  thy 

might? 
Spend'st  thou  thy  fury  on  some  worthless 

song. 
Darkening  thy  power  to  lend  base  subjects 

light?" 

he  cries,  and  he  then  proceeds  to  reproach  the  mis' 
tress  of  Tragedy  and  Comedy  for  her  "neglect  of 
truth  in  beauty  dyed,"  and  says — 

"Because  he  needs  no  praise,  wilt  thou  be 

dumb? 
Excuse  not  silence  so;  for 't  lies  in  thee 
To  make  him  much  outlive  a  gilded  tomb. 
And  to  be  praised  of  ages  yet  to  be. 
Then  do  thy  office,  Muse,  I  teach  thee  how. 
To  make  him  seem  long  hence  as  he  shows 


now." 


It  is,  however,  perhaps  in  Sonnet  LV  that  Shake- 
speare gives  to  this  idea  its  fullest  expression.  To 
imagine  that  the  "powerful  rhyme"  of  the  second 
line  refers  to  the  sonnet  itself  was  entirely  to  mis- 
take  Shakespeare's  meaning.  It  seemed  to  me  that 


THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H.  47 

it  was  extremely  likely,  from  the  general  character 
of  the  sonnet,  that  a  particular  play  was  meant, 
and'that  the  play  was  none  other  but  "Romeo  and 
Juliet." 

"Not  marble,  nor  the  gilded  monuments 
Of  princes  shall  outlive  this  powerful  rhyme; 
But  you  shall  shine  more  bright  in  these 

contents 
Than  unswept  stone  besmeared  with  sluttish 

time. 
When  wasteful  war  shall  statues  overturn, 
And  broils  root  out  the  work  of  masonry, 
Not  Mars  his  sword  nor  war's  quick  fire  shall 

burn 
The  living  record  of  your  memory. 
'Gainst  death  and  ail'oblivious  enmity 
Shall  you  pace  forth;  your  praise  shall  still  find 

room 
Even  in  the  eyesof  all  posterity 
That  wear  this  world  out  to  the  ending  doom. 
So,  till  the  judgment  that  yourself  arise. 
You  live  in  this,  and  dwell  in  lovers'  eyes." 

It  was  also  very  suggestive  to  note  how  here  as  else- 
where Shakespeare  promised  Willie  Hughes  im- 
mortality in  a  form  that  appealed  to  men's  eyes — 


48  THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H. 

that  is  to  say,  in  a  spectacular  form,  in  a  play  that  is 
to  be  looked  at. 

For  two  weeks  I  worked  hard  at  the  Sonnets, 
hardly  ever  going  out,  and  refusing  all  invitations. 
Every  day  I  seemed  to  be  discovering  something 
new,  and  Willie  Hughes  became  to  me  a  kind  of 
spiritual  presence,  an  ever-dominant  personality.  I 
could  almost  fancy  that  I  saw  him  standing  in  the 
shadow  of  my  room,  so  well  had  Shakespeare  drawn 
him,  with  his  golden  hair,  his  tender  flower-like 
grace,  his  dreamy  deep'sunken  eyes,  his  delicate  mo- 
bile limbs,  and  his  white  lily  hands.  His  very  name 
fascinated  me.  Willie  Hughes !  Willie  Hughes !  How 
musically  it  sounded!  Yes;  who  else  but  he  could 
have  been  the  master^mistress  of  Shakespeare's  pas- 
sion, ^  the  lord  of  his  love  to  whom  he  was  bound  in 
vassalage,^  the  delicate  minion  of  pleasure,^  the  rose 
of  the  whole  world,"  the  herald  of  the  spring,^  decked 
in  the  proud  livery  of  youth,"  the  lovely  boy  whom 
it  was  sweet  music  to  hear,^  and  whose  beauty  was 
the  very  raiment  of  Shakespeare's  heart,^  as  it  was 


» Sonnet  XX.  2.  2  Sonnet  XXVI.  i.  '  Sonnet  CXXVI.  9. 

♦Sonnet  CIX.  14.  ' Sonnet  I.  10.  •  Sonnet  II.  3. 

'.Sonnet  VIII.  1.  'Sonnet  XXII.  6. 


THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H.  49 

the  keystone  of  his  dramatic  power?  How  bitter 
now  seemed  the  whole  tragedy  of  his  desertion  and 
his  shame! — shame  that  he  made  sweet  and  lovely ^ 
by  the  mere  magic  of  his  personality,  but  that  was 
none  the  less  shame.  Yet  as  Shakespeare  forgave 
him,  should  not  we  forgive  him  also?  I  did  not  care 
to  pry  into  the  mystery  of  his  sin  or  of  the  sin,  if  such 
it  was,  of  the  great  poet  who  had  so  dearly  loved 
him.  "I  am  that  I  am,"  said  Shakespeare  in  a  sonnet 
of  noble  scorn, — 

"I  am  that  I  am,  and  they  that  level 
At  my  abuses  reckon  up  their  own; 
I  may  be  straight,  though  they  themselves  be 

bevel; 
By  their  rank  thoughts  my  deeds  must  not  be 
shown." 

WiUie  Hughes'  abandonment  of  Shakespeare's 
theatre  was  a  different  matter,  and  I  investigated  it 
at  great  length.  Finally  I  came  to  the  conclusion 
that  Cyril  Graham  had  been  wrong  in  regarding 
the  rival  dramatist  of  Sonnet  LXXX  as  Chapman. 
It  was  obviously  Marlowe  who  was  alluded  to.  At 

1  Sonnet  XCV.  i. 


50  THE  PORTPLAIT  OF  MR  W.  H. 

the  time  the  Sonnets  were  written,  which  must  have 
been  between  1590  and  1595,  such  an  expression  as 
"the  proud  full  sail  of  his  great  verse"  could  not  pos' 
sibly  have  been  used  of  Chapman's  work,  however 
applicable  it  might  have  been  to  the  style  of  his  later 
Jacobean  plays.  No ;  Marlowe  was  clearly  the  rival 
poet  of  whom  Shakespeare  spoke  in  such  laudatory 
terms;  the  hymn  he  wrote  in  Willie  Hughes'  honour 
was  the  unfinished  "Hero  and  Leander,"  and  that 

"Affable  familiar  ghost 
Which  nightly  gulls  him  with  intelligence,'" 

was  the  Mephistophilis  of  his  Doctor  Faustus.  No 
doubt,  Marlowe  was  fascinated  by  the  beauty  and 
grace  of  the  boyactor,  and  lured  him  away  from  the 
Blackfriars  Theatre,  that  he  might  play  the  Gaves' 
ton  of  his  "Edward  II."  That  Shakespeare  had  some 
legal  right  to  retain  Willie  Hughes  in  his  own  com' 
pany  seems  evident  from  Sonnet  LXXX VII,  where 
he  says: — 

"Farewell!  thou  art  too  dear  for  my  possessing. 
And  like  enough  thou  know'st  thy  estimate: 
The  charter  of  thy  worth  gives  thee  releasing; 
My  bonds  in  thee  are  all  determinate. 


THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H.  5 1 

For  how  do  I  hold  thee  but  by  thy  granting? 
And  for  that  riches  where  is  my  deserving? 
The  cause  of  this  fair  gift  in  me  is  wanting, 
And  so  my  patent  hac\  again  is  swerving. 
Thyself  thou  gav'st,  thy  own' worth  then  not 

knowing, 
Or  me,  to  whom  thou  gav'st  it,  else  mistaking; 
So  thy  great  gift,  upon  misprision  growing, 
Comes  home  again,  on  better  judgment  making. 
Thus  have  I  had  thee,  as  a  dream  doth  flatter, 
In  sleep  a  king,  but  waking  no  such  matter." 

But  him  whom  he  could  not  hold  by  love,  he 
would  not  hold  by  force.  Willie  Hughes  became  a 
member  of  Lord  Pembroke's  company,  and  perhaps 
in  the  open  yard  of  the  Red  Bull  Tavern,  played  the 
part  of  King  Edward's  delicate  minion.  On  Mar^ 
lowers  death,  he  seems  to  have  returned  to  Shake 
speare,  who,  whatever  his  fellowpartners  may 
have  thought  of  the  matter,  was  not  slow  to  for' 
give  the  wilfulness  and  treachery  of  the  young 
actor. 

How  well,  too,  had  Shakespeare  drawn  the  tem^ 
perament  of  thestagcplayer!  Willie  Hughes  was 
one  of  those — 


52  THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H. 

"That  do  not  do  the  thing  they  most  do  show, 
Who,  moving  others,  are  themselves  as  stone." 

He  could  act  love,  but  could  not  feel  it,  could  mimic 

passion  without  realising  it. 

"In  many's  looks  the  false  heart's  history 
Is  writ  in  moods  and  frowns  and  wrinkles 
strange," 

but  with  Willie  Hughes  it  was  not  so.  "Heaven," 
says  Shakespeare,  in  a  sonnet  of  mad  idolatry — 
"Heaven  in  thy  creation  did  decree 
That  in  thy  face  sweet  love  should  ever  dwell; 
Whatever  thy  thoughts  or  thy  heart's  work' 

ings  be. 
Thy  looks  should  nothing  thence  but  sweet' 
ness  tell." 

In  his  "inconstant  mind"  and  his  "false  heart"  it 
was  easy  to  recognise  the  insincerity  that  somehow 
seems  inseparable  from  the  artistic  nature,  as  in  his 
love  of  praise,  that  desire  for  immediate  recognition 
that  characterises  all  actors.  And  yet,  more  fortu" 
nate  in  this  than  other  actors,  Willie  Hughes  was 
to  know  something  of  immortaHty.  Intimately  con^ 
nected  with  Shakespeare's  plays,  he  was  to  live  in 
them,  and  by  their  production. 


THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H.  53 

"Your  name  from  hence  immortal  life  shall  have. 
Though  I,  once  gone,  to  all  the  world  must  die: 
The  earth  can  yield  me  but  a  common  grave. 
When  you  entombed  in  men  s  eyes  shall  lie. 
Your  monument  shall  be  my  gentle  verse. 
Which  eyes  not  yet  created  shall  o'er 'read. 
And  tongues  to  be  your  being  shall  rehearse, 
When  all  the  breathers  of  this  world  are  dead." 

Nash  with  his  venomous  tongue  had  railed 
against  Shakespeare  for  "reposing  eternity  in  the 
mouth  of  a  player,"  the  reference  being  obviously 
to  the  Sonnets. 

But  to  Shakespeare,  the  actor  was  a  deliberate 
and  self-conscious  fellowworker  who  gave  form 
and  substance  to  a  poet's  fancy,  and  brought  into 
Drama  the  elements  of  a  noble  realism.  His  silence 
could  be  as  eloquent  as  words,  and  his  gesture  as 
expressive,  and  in  those  terrible  moments  of  Titan 
agony  or  of  god-like  pain,  when  thought  outstrips 
utterance,  when  the  soul  sick  with  excess  of  an- 
guish  stammers  or  is  dumb,  and  the  very  raiment 
of  speech  is  rent  and  torn  by  passion  in  its  storm, 
then  the  actor  could  become,  though  it  were  but 


54  THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H. 

for  a  moment,  a  creative  artist,  and  touch  by  his 
mere  presence  and  personality  those  springs  of  ter' 
ror  and  of  pity  to  which  tragedy  appeals.  This  full 
recognition  of  the  actor's  art,  and  of  the  actor's 
power,  was  one  of  the  things  that  distinguished  the 
Romantic  from  the  Classical  Drama,  and  one  of  the 
things,  consequently,  that  we  owed  to  Shakespeare, 
who,  fortunate  in  much,  was  fortunate  also  in  this, 
that  he  was  able  to  find  Richard  Burbage  and  to 
fashion  Willie  Hughes. 

With  what  pleasure  he  dwelt  upon  Willie 
Hughes'  influence  over  his  audience — the  "gazers" 
as  he  calls  them;  with  what  charm  of  fancy  did  he 
analyse  the  whole  art !  Even  in  the  "Lover  s  Com' 
plaint"  he  speaks  of  his  acting,  and  tells  us  that  he 
was  of  a  nature  so  impressionable  to  the  quality  of 
dramatic  situations  that  he  could  assume  all  "strange 
forms" — 

"Of  burning  blushes,  or  of  weeping  water. 
Or  swooning  paleness": 

explaining  his  meaning  more  fully  later  on  where 

he  tells  us  how  Willie  Hughes  was  able  to  deceive 

others  by  his  wonderful  power  to — 


THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H.  55 

"Blush  at  speeches  rank,  to  weep  at  woes, 
Or  to  turn  white  and  swoon  at  tragic  shows/' 

It  had  never  been  pointed  out  before  that  the  shep' 
herd  of  this  lovely  pastoral,  whose  "youth  in  art 
and  art  in  youth"  are  described  with  such  subtlety 
of  phrase  and  passion,  was  none  other  than  the  Mr 
W.  H.  of  the  Sonnets.  And  yet  there  was  no  doubt 
that  he  was  so.  Not  merely  in  personal  appearance 
are  the  two  lads  the  same,  but  their  natures  and 
temperaments  are  identical.  When  the  false  shep' 
herd  whispers  to  the  fickle  maid — 

"All  my  offences  that  abroad  you  see 
Are  errors  of  the  blood,  none  of  the  mind; 
Love  made  them  not": 

when  he  says  of  his  lovers, 

"Harm  have  I  done  to  them,  but  ne'er  was 

harmed; 
Kept  hearts  in  hveries,  but  mine  own  was  free. 
And  reigned,  commanding  in  his  monarchy": 

when  he  tells  us  of  the  "deep'brained  sonnets"  that 
one  of  them  had  sent  him,  and  cries  out  in  boyish 
pride — 


56  THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H. 

"The  broken  bosoms  that  to  me  belong 
Have  emptied  all  their  fountains  in  my  weU": 

it  is  impossible  not  to  feel  that  it  is  Willie  Hughes 
who  is  speaking  to  us.  "Deep'brained  sonnets,"  in' 
deed,  had  Shakespeare  brought  him,  "jewels"  that 
to  his  careless  eyes  were  but  as  "trifles,"  though — 

"each  several  stone, 
With  wit  well  blazoned,  smiled  or  made  some 
moan"; 

and  into  the  well  of  beauty  he  had  emptied  the 
sweet  fountain  of  his  song.  That  in  both  places  it 
was  an  actor  who  was  alluded  to,  was  also  clear. 
The  betrayed  nymph  tells  us  of  the  "false  fire''  in 
her  lover  s  cheek,  of  the  "forced  thunder"  of  his 
sighs,  and  of  his  "borrowed  motion":  of  whom,  in' 
deed,  but  of  an  actor  could  it  be  said  that  to  him 
"thought,  characters,  and  words"  were  "merely 
Art,"  or  that — 

"To  make  the  weeper  laugh,  the  laugher  weep. 
He  had  the  dialect  and  different  skill. 
Catching  all  passions  in  his  craft  of  will"? 

The  play  on  words  in  the  last  line  is  the  same  as 
that  used  in  the  punning  sonnets,  and  is  continued 


THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H.  57 

in  the  following  stanza  of  the  poem,  where  we  are 

told  of  the  youth  who — 

"did  in  the  general  bosom  reign 
Of  young,  of  old;  and  sexes  both  enchanted  " 

that  there  were  those  who — 

" .  .  dialogued  for  him  what  he  would  say, 
Asked  their  own  wills,  and  made  their  Wills 
obey." 

Yes:  the  "rose'cheeked  Adonis"  of  the  Venus 
poem,  the  false  shepherd  of  the  "Lover's  Com' 
plaint,"  the  "  tender  churl,"  the  "beauteous  niggard" 
of  the  Sonnets,  was  none  other  but  a  young  actor; 
and  as  I  read  through  the  various  descriptions  given 
of  him,  I  saw  that  the  love  that  Shakespeare  bore 
him  was  as  the  love  of  a  musician  for  some  delicate 
instrument  on  which  he  delights  to  play,  as  a  sculp' 
tor  s  love  for  some  rare  and  exquisite  material  that 
suggests  a  new  form  of  plastic  beauty,  a  new  mode 
of  plastic  expression.  For  all  Art  has  its  medium,  its 
material,  be  it  that  of  rhythmical  words,  or  of  pleas- 
urable colour,  or  of  sweet  and  subtly-divided  sound; 
and,  as  one  of  the  most  fascinating  critics  of  our  day 
has  pointed  out,  it  is  to  the  qualities  inherent  in 


58  THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H. 

each  material,  and  special  to  it,  that  we  owe  the 
sensuous  element  in  Art,  and  with  it  all  that  in  Art 
is  essentially  artistic.  What  then  shall  we  say  of 
the  material  that  the  Drama  requires  for  its  perfect 
presentation?  What  of  the  Actor,  who  is  the  mc 
dium  through  which  alone  the  Drama  can  truly 
reveal  itself?  Surely,  in  that  strange  mimicry  of  life 
by  the  living  which  is  the  mode  and  method  of 
Theatric  art,  there  are  sensuous  elements  of  beauty 
that  none  of  the  other  arts  possess.  Looked  at  from 
one  point  of  view,  the  common  players  of  the  saf- 
fron'Strewn  stage  are  Art's  most  complete,  most 
satisfying  instruments.  There  is  no  passion  in 
bronze,  nor  motion  in  marble.  The  sculptor  must 
surrender  colour,  and  the  painter  fullness  of  form. 
The  epos  changes  acts  into  words,  and  music 
changes  words  into  tones.  It  is  the  Drama  only 
that,  to  quote  the  fine  saying  of  Gervinus,  uses  all 
means  at  once,  and,  appealing  both  to  eye  and  ear, 
has  at  its  disposal,  and  in  its  service,  form  and  col' 
our,  tone,  look,  and  word,  the  swiftness  of  motion, 
the  intense  realism  of  visible  action. 

It  may  be  that  in  this  very  completeness  of  the 


THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H.  59 

instrument  lies  the  secret  of  some  weakness  in  the 
art.  Those  arts  are  happiest  that  employ  a  material 
remote  from  reality,  and  there  is  a  danger  in  the  ab' 
solute  identity  of  medium  and  matter,  the  danger 
of  ignoble  realism  and  unimaginative  imitation.  Yet 
Shakespeare  himself  was  a  player,  and  wrote  for 
players.  He  saw  the  possibilities  that  lay  hidden  in 
an  art  that  up  to  his  time  had  expressed  itself  but 
in  bombast  or  in  clowning.  He  has  left  us  the  most 
perfect  rules  for  acting  that  have  ever  been  written. 
He  created  parts  that  can  be  only  truly  revealed  to 
us  on  the  stage,  wrote  plays  that  need  the  theatre 
for  their  full  realisation,  and  we  cannot  marvel  that 
he  so  worshipped  one  who  was  the  interpreter  of 
his  vision,  as  he  was  the  incarnation  of  his  dreams. 
There  was,  however,  more  in  this  friendship  than 
the  mere  delight  of  a  dramatist  in  one  who  helps 
him  to  achieve  his  end.  This  was  indeed  a  subtle 
element  of  pleasure,  if  not  of  passion,  and  a  noble 
basis  for  an  artistic  comradeship.  But  it  was  not  all 
that  the  Sonnets  revealed  to  us.  There  was  some 
thing  beyond.  There  was  the  soul,  as  well  as  the 
language,  of  neo'Platonism. 


60  THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H. 

"The  fear  of  the  Lord  is  the  beginning  of  wis' 
dom,"  said  the  stern  Hebrew  prophet:  "The  begin' 
ning  of  wisdom  is  Love,"  was  the  gracious  message 
of  the  Greek.  And  the  spirit  of  the  Renaissance, 
which  already  touched  Hellenism  at  so  many  points, 
catching  the  inner  meaning  of  this  phrase  and  di' 
vining  its  secret,  sought  to  elevate  friendship  to  the 
high  dignity  of  the  antique  ideal,  to  make  it  a  vital 
factor  in  the  new  culture,  and  a  mode  of  self-con^ 
scious  intellectual  development.  In  1492  appeared 
Marsilio  Ficino's  translation  of  the  "Symposium"  of 
Plato,  and  this  wonderful  dialogue,  of  all  the  Pla- 
tonic dialogues  perhaps  the  most  perfect,  as  it  is  the 
most  poetical,  began  to  exercise  a  strange  influence 
over  men,  and  to  colour  their  words  and  thoughts, 
and  manner  of  living.  In  its  subtle  suggestions  of  sex 
in  soul,  in  the  curious  analogies  it  draws  between 
intellectual  enthusiasm  and  the  physical  passion  of 
love,  in  its  dream  of  the  incarnation  of  the  Idea  in 
a  beautiful  and  living  form,  and  of  a  real  spiritual 
conception  with  a  travail  and  a  bringing  to  birth, 
there  was  something  that  fascinated  the  poets  and 
scholars  of  the  sixteenth  century.  Shakespeare,  cer- 


THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H.  6 1 

tainly,  was  fascinated  by  it,  and  had  read  the  dia' 
logue,  if  not  in  Ficino's  translation,  of  which  many 
copies  found  their  way  to  England,  perhaps  in  that 
French  translation  by  Leroy  to  which  Joachim  du 
Bellay  contributed  so  many  graceful  metrical  ver' 
sions.  When  he  says  to  Willie  Hughes, 

"he  that  calls  on  thee,  let  him  bring  forth 
Eternal  numbers  to  outlive  long  date," 

he  is  thinking  of  Diotima's  theory  that  Beauty  is 

the  goddess  who  presides  over  birth,  and  draws  into 

the  light  of  day  the  dim  conceptions  of  the  soul: 

when  he  tells  us  of  the  "marriage  of  true  minds,"  and 

exhorts  his  friend  to  beget  children  that  time  can' 

not  destroy,  he  is  but  repeating  the  words  in  which 

the  prophetess  tells  us  that  "friends  are  married  by 

a  far  nearer  tie  than  those  who  beget  mortal  chil' 

dren,  for  fairer  and  more  immortal  are  the  children 

who  are  their  common  offspring."  So,  also,  Edward 

Blount  in  his  dedication  of  "Hero  and  Leander"  talks 

of  Marlowe's  works  as  his  "right  children,"  being 

the  "issue  of  his  brain";  and  when  Bacon  claims  that 

"the  best  works  and  of  greatest  merit  for  the  public 

have  proceeded  from  the  unmarried  and  childless 


62  THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H. 

men,  which  both  in  affection  and  means  have  mar" 
ried  and  endowed  the  public,"  he  is  paraphrasing 
a  passage  in  the  "Symposium." 

Friendship,  indeed,  could  have  desired  no  better 
warrant  for  its  permanence  or  its  ardours  than  the 
Platonic  theory,  or  creed,  as  we  might  better  call  it, 
that  the  true  world  was  the  world  of  ideas,  and  that 
these  ideas  took  visible  form  and  became  incarnate 
in  man,  and  it  is  only  when  we  realise  the  influence 
of  neo'Platonism  on  the  Renaissance  that  we  can 
understand  the  true  meaning  of  the  amatory  phrases 
and  words  with  which  friends  were  wont,  at  this 
time,  to  address  each  other.  There  was  a  kind  of 
mystic  transference  of  the  expressions  of  the  physi' 
cal  sphere  to  a  sphere  that  was  spiritual,  that  was 
removed  from  gross  bodily  appetite,  and  in  which 
the  soul  was  Lord.  Love  had,  indeed,  entered  the 
olive  garden  of  the  new  Academe,  but  he  wore  the 
same  flamccoloured  raiment,  and  had  the  same 
words  of  passion  on  his  lips. 

Michael  Angelo,  the  "haughtiest  spirit  in  Italy" 
as  he  has  been  called,  addresses  the  youngTommaso 
Cavalieri  in  such  fervent  and  passionate  terms  that 


THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H.  63 

some  have  thought  that  the  sonnets  in  question 
must  have  been  intended  for  that  noble  lady,  the 
widow  of  the  Marchese  di  Pescara,  whose  white 
hand,  when  she  was  dying,  the  great  sculptor's  lips 
had  stooped  to  kiss.  But  that  it  was  to  Cavalieri 
that  they  were  written,  and  that  the  literal  inter' 
pretation  is  the  right  one,  is  evident  not  merely 
from  the  fact  that  Michael  Angelo  plays  with  his 
name,  as  Shakespeare  plays  with  the  name  of  Willie 
Hughes,  but  from  the  direct  evidence  of  Varchi, 
who  was  well  acquainted  with  the  young  man, 
and  who,  indeed,  tells  us  that  he  possessed  "besides 
incomparable  personal  beauty,  so  much  charm  of 
nature,  such  excellent  abilities,  and  such  a  graceful 
manner,  that  he  deserved,  and  still  deserves,  to  be 
the  better  loved  the  more  he  is  known/'  Strange 
as  these  sonnets  may  seem  to  us  now,  when  rightly 
interpreted  they  merely  serve  to  show  with  what 
intense  and  religious  fervour  Michael  Angelo  ad' 
dressed  himself  to  the  worship  of  intellectual  beau' 
ty,  and  how,  to  borrow  a  fine  phrase  from  Mr  Sym' 
onds,  he  pierced  through  the  veil  of  flesh  and  sought 
the  divine  idea  it  imprisoned.  In  the  sonnet  writ' 


64  THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H. 

ten  for  Luigi  del  Riccio  on  the  death  of  his  friend, 
Cecchino  Bracci,  we  can  also  trace,  as  Mr  Symonds 
points  out,  the  Platonic  conception  of  love  as  noth' 
ing  if  not  spiritual,  and  of  beauty  as  a  form  that  finds 
its  immortality  within  the  lover's  soul.  Cecchino 
was  a  lad  who  died  at  the  age  of  seventeen,  and 
when  Luigi  asked  Michael  Angelo  to  make  a  pop 
trait  of  him,  Michael  Angelo  answered,  "I  can  only 
do  so  by  drawing  you  in  whom  he  still  lives." 

"If  the  beloved  in  the  lover  shine. 
Since  Art  without  him  cannot  work  alone, 
Thee  must  I  carve,  to  tell  the  world  of  him." 

The  same  idea  is  also  put  forward  in  Montaigne's 
noble  essay  on  Friendship,  a  passion  which  he  ranks 
higher  than  the  love  of  brother  for  brother,  or  the 
love  of  man  for  woman.  He  tells  us — I  quote  from 
Florio's  translation,  one  of  the  books  with  which 
Shakespeare  was  familiar— how  "perfect  amitie"  is 
indivisible,  how  it  "possesseth  the  soule,  and  swaies 
it  in  all  soveraigntie,"and  how  "by  the  interposition 
of  a  spiritual  beauty  the  desire  of  a  spiritual  con^ 
ception  is  engendered  in  the  beloved."  He  writes 
of  an  "internall  beauty,  of  difficile  knowledge,  and 


THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H.  65 

abstruse  discovery"  that  is  revealed  unto  friends, 
and  unto  friends  only.  He  mourns  for  the  dead 
Etienne  de  la  Boetie,  in  accents  of  wild  grief  and 
inconsolable  love.  The  learned  Hubert  Languet, 
the  friend  of  Melanchthon  and  of  the  leaders  of  the 
reformed  church,  tells  the  young  Philip  Sidney 
how  he  kept  his  portrait  by  him  some  hours  to  feast 
his  eyes  upon  it,  and  how  his  appetite  was  "rather 
increased  than  diminished  by  the  sight,"  and  Sidney 
writes  to  him,  "the  chief  hope  of  my  life,  next  to 
the  everlasting  blessedness  of  heaven,  will  always 
be  the  enjoyment  of  true  friendship,  and  there  you 
shall  have  the  chiefest  place."  Later  on  there  came 
to  Sidney's  house  in  London,  one — some  day  to  be 
burned  at  Rome,  for  the  sin  of  seeing  God  in  all 
things— Giordano  Bruno,  just  fresh  from  his  triumph 
before  the  University  of  Paris.  "A  filosofia  e  neces' 
sario  amore"  were  the  words  ever  upon  his  lips, 
and  there  was  something  in  his  strange  ardent  per^ 
sonality  that  made  men  feel  that  he  had  discovered 
the  new  secret  of  life.  Ben  Jonson  writing  to  one 
of  his  friends  subscribes  himself  "your  true  lover," 
and  dedicates  his  noble  eulogy  on  Shakespeare  "To 


66  THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H. 

the  memory  of  my  Beloved."  Richard  Barnfield  in 
his  "Affectionate  Shepherd"  flutes  on  soft  Virgilian 
reed  the  story  of  his  attachment  to  some  young 
Elizabethan  of  the  day.  Out  of  all  the  Eclogues, 
Abraham  Fraunce  selects  the  second  for  transla- 
tion, and  Fletcher's  lines  to  Master  W.  C.  show 
what  fascination  was  hidden  in  the  mere  name  of 
Alexis. 

It  was  no  wonder  then  that  Shakespeare  had 
been  stirred  by  a  spirit  that  so  stirred  his  age.  There 
had  been  critics,  like  Hallam,  who  had  regretted 
that  the  Sonnets  had  ever  been  written,  who  had 
seen  in  them  something  dangerous,  something  un- 
lawful even.  To  them  it  would  have  been  sufficient 
to  answer  in  Chapman  s  noble  words: 

"There  is  no  danger  to  a  man  that  knows 
What  Life  and  Death  is :  there's  not  any  law 
Exceeds  his  knowledge:  neither  is  it  lawful 
That  he  should  stoop  to  any  other  law." 

But  it  was  evident  that  the  Sonnets  needed  no  such 
defence  as  this,  and  that  those  who  had  talked  of 
"the  folly  of  excessive  and  misplaced  affection"  had 
not  been  able  to  interpret  either  the  language  or 


THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H.  67 

the  spirit  of  these  great  poems,  so  intimately  con' 
nected  with  the  philosophy  and  the  art  of  their 
time.  It  is  no  doubt  true  that  to  be  filled  with  an 
absorbing  passion  is  to  surrender  the  security  of 
one's  lover  life,  and  yet  in  such  surrender  there  may 
be  gain,  certainly  there  was  for  Shakespeare.  When 
Pico  della  Mirandola  crossed  the  threshold  of  the 
villa  of  Careggi,  and  stood  before  Marsilio  Ficino 
in  all  the  grace  and  comeliness  of  his  wonderful 
youth,  the  aged  scholar  seemed  to  see  in  him  the 
realisation  of  the  Greek  ideal,  and  determined 
to  devote  his  remaining  years  to  the  translation  of 
Plotinus,  that  new  Plato,  in  whom,  as  Mr  Pater 
reminds  us,  "the  mystical  element  in  the  Platonic 
philosophy  had  been  worked  out  to  the  utmost 
limit  of  vision  and  ecstasy."  A  romantic  friendship 
with  a  young  Roman  of  his  day  initiated  Winckel' 
mann  into  the  secret  of  Greek  art,  taught  him  the 
mystery  of  its  beauty  and  the  meaning  of  its  form. 
In  Willie  Hughes,  Shakespeare  found  not  merely  a 
most  delicate  instrument  for  the  presentation  of  his 
art,  but  the  visible  incarnation  of  his  idea  of  beauty, 
and  it  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  to  this  young 


68  THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H. 

actor,  whose  very  name  the  dull  writers  of  his  age 
forgot  to  chronicle,  the  Romantic  Movement  of 
English  Literature  is  largely  indebted. 


Ill 

One  evening  I  thought  that  I  had  really  discov 
ered  Willie  Hughes  in  Elizabethan  Hterature.  In  a 
wonderfully  graphic  account  of  the  last  days  of  the 
great  Earl  of  Essex,  his  chaplain,  Thomas  Knell,  tells 
us  that  the  night  before  the  Earl  died,  "he  called 
WilHam  Hewes,  which  was  his  musician,  to  play 
upon  the  virginals  and  to  sing.  'Play,'  said  he,  'my 
song.  Will  Hewes,  and  I  will  sing  it  myself  So  he 
did  it  most  joyfully,  not  as  the  howling  swan,  which, 
still  looking  down,  waileth  her  end,  but  as  a  sweet 
lark,  lifting  up  his  hands  and  casting  up  his  eyes  to 
his  God,  with  this  mounted  the  crystal  skies,  and 
reached  with  his  unwearied  tongue  the  top  of  high' 
est  heavens."  Surely  the  boy  who  played  on  the 
virginals  to  the  dying  father  of  Sidney's  Stella  was 
none  other  than  the  Will  Hews  to  v/hom  Shake 
speare  dedicated  the  Sonnets,  and  who  he  tells  us 
was  himself  sweet  "music  to  hear."  Yet  Lord  Essex 
died  in  1576,  when  Shakespeare  was  but  twelve 


70  THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H. 

years  of  age.  It  was  impossible  that  his  musician 
could  have  been  the  Mr  W.  H.  of  the  Sonnets.  Per' 
haps  Shakespeare's  young  friend  was  the  son  of  the 
player  upon  the  virginals?  It  was  at  least  some 
thing  to  have  discovered  that  Will  Hews  was  an 
Elizabethan  name.  Indeed  the  name  Hews  seemed 
to  have  been  closely  connected  with  music  and  the 
stage.  The  first  English  actress  was  the  lovely  Mar' 
garet  Hews,  whom  Prince  Rupert  so  madly  adored. 
What  more  probable  than  that  between  her  and 
Lord  Essex'  musician  had  come  the  boyactor  of 
Shakespeare's  plays?  In  1587  a  certain  Thomas 
Hews  brought  out  at  Gray's  Inn  a  Euripidean  trag' 
edy  entitled  "The  Misfortunes  of  Arthur,"  receiv 
ing  much  assistance  in  the  arrangement  of  the  dumb 
shows  from  one  Francis  Bacon,  then  a  student  of 
law.  Surely  he  was  some  near  kinsman  of  the  lad 
to  whom  Shakespeare  said — 

"Take  all  my  loves,  my  love,  yea,  take  them  all"; 
the  "profitless  usurer"  of  "unused  beauty,"  as  he  dc 
scribes  him.  But  the  proofs,  the  links — where  were 
they?  Alas!  I  could  not  find  them.  It  seemed  to  me 
that  I  was  always  on  the  brink  of  absolute  verifi' 


THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H.  7 1 

cation,  but  that  I  could  never  really  attain  to  it. 
I  thought  it  strange  that  no  one  had  ever  written 
a  history  of  the  English  boyactors  of  the  sixteenth 
and  seventeenth  centuries,  and  determined  to  un' 
dertake  the  task  myself,  and  to  try  and  ascertain 
their  true  relations  to  the  drama.  The  subject  was, 
certainly,  full  of  artistic  interest.  These  lads  had 
been  the  delicate  reeds  through  which  our  poets 
had  sounded  their  sweetest  strains,  the  gracious  ' 
vessels  of  honour  into  which  they  had  poured  the 
purple  wine  of  their  song.  Foremost,  naturally, 
amongst  them  all  had  been  the  youth  to  whom 
Shakespeare  had  intrusted  the  realisation  of  his 
most  exquisite  creations.  Beauty  had  been  his,  such 
as  our  age  has  never,  or  but  rarely  seen,  a  beauty 
that  seemed  to  combine  the  charm  of  both  sexes, 
and  to  have  wedded,  as  the  Sonnets  tell  us,  the 
grace  of  Adonis  and  the  loveliness  of  Helen.  He 
had  been  quick-witted,  too,  and  eloquent,  and  from 
those  finely  curved  lips  that  the  satirist  had  mocked 
at  had  come  the  passionate  cry  of  Juliet,  and  the 
bright  laughter  of  Beatrice,  Perdita's  flower-like 
words,  and  Ophelia's  wandering  songs.  Yet  as  Shake 


72  THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H. 

speare  himself  had  been  but  as  a  god  among  giants, 
so  Willie  Hughes  had  only  been  one  out  of  many 
marvellous  lads  to  whom  our  English  Renaissance 
owed  something  of  the  secret  of  its  joy,  and  it  ap' 
peared  to  me  that  they  also  were  worthy  of  some 
study  and  record. 

In  a  little  book  with  fine  vellum  leaves  and  dam' 
ask  silk  cover — a  fancy  of  mine  in  those  fanciful 
days — I  accordingly  collected  such  information  as 
I  could  about  them,  and  even  now  there  is  some 
thing  in  the  scanty  record  of  their  lives,  in  the  mere 
mention  of  their  names,  that  attracts  me.  I  seemed 
to  know  them  all:  Robin  Armin,  the  goldsmith's 
lad  who  was  lured  by  Tarlton  to  go  on  the  stage: 
Sandford,  whose  performance  of  the  courtezan  Ha' 
mantia  Lord  Burleigh  witnessed  at  Gray's  Inn: 
Cooke,  who  played  Agrippina  in  the  tragedy  of 
"Sejanus":  Nat.  Field,  whose  young  and  beardless 
portrait  is  still  preserved  for  us  at  Dulwich,  and 
who  in  "Cynthia's  Revels"  played  the  "Queen  and 
Huntress  chaste  and  fair":  Gil.  Carie,  who,  attired 
as  a  mountain  nymph,  sang  in  the  same  lovely 
masque  Echo's  song  of  mourning  for  Narcissus :  Par' 


THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H.  73 

sons,  the  Salmacis  of  the  strange  pageant  of  "Tani' 
burlaine":  Will.  Ostler,  who  was  one  of  "The  Chil' 
dren  of  the  Queen's  Chapel,"  and  accompanied  King 
James  to  Scotland:  George  Vernon,  to  whom  the 
King  sent  a  cloak  of  scarlet  cloth,  and  a  cape  of 
crimson  velvet:  Alick  Gough,  who  performed  the 
part  of  Csnis,  Vespasian's  concubine,  in  Massin" 
ger's  "Roman  Actor,"  and  three  years  later  that  of 
Acanthe,  in  the  same  dramatist's  "Picture":  Barrett, 
the  heroine  of  Richards'  tragedy  of  "Messalina": 
Dicky  Robinson,  "a  very  pretty  fellow,"  Ben  Jon- 
son  tells  us,  who  was  a  member  of  Shakespeare's 
company,  and  was  known  for  his  exquisite  taste  in 
costume,  as  well  as  for  his  love  of  woman's  apparel: 
Salathiel  Pavy,  whose  early  and  tragic  death  Jon- 
son  mourned  in  one  of  the  sweetest  threnodies  of 
our  literature :  Arthur  Savile,  who  was  one  of  "the 
players  of  Prince  Charles,"  and  took  a  girl's  part  in 
a  comedy  by  Marmion:  Stephen  Hammerton,  "a 
most  noted  and  beautiful  woman  actor,"  whose  pale 
oval  face  with  its  heavy 'lidded  eyes  and  somewhat 
sensuous  mouth  looks  out  at  us  from  a  curious  min- 
iature of  the  time:  Hart,  who  made  his  first  success 


74  THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H. 

by  playing  the  Duchess  in  the  tragedy  of  "  The  Car' 
dinal,"  and  who  in  a  poem  that  is  clearly  modelled 
upon  some  of  Shakespeare's  Sonnets  is  described 
by  one  who  had  seen  him  as  "beauty  to  the  eye, 
and  music  to  the  ear'':  and  Kynaston,  of  whom 
Betterton  said  that  "it  has  been  disputed  among 
the  judicious,  whether  any  woman  could  have 
more  sensibly  touched  the  passions,"  and  whose 
white  hands  and  amber-coloured  hair  seem  to  have 
retarded  by  some  years  the  introduction  of  ac 
tresses  upon  our  stage. 

The  Puritans,  with  their  uncouth  morals  and 
ignoble  minds,  had  of  course  railed  against  them, 
and  dwelt  on  the  impropriety  of  boys  disguising  as 
women,  and  learning  to  affect  the  manners  and  pas' 
sions  of  the  female  sex.  Gosson,  with  his  shrill  voice, 
and  Prynne,  soon  to  be  made  earless  for  many 
shameful  slanders,  and  others  to  whom  the  rare  and 
subtle  sense  of  abstract  beauty  was  denied,  had 
from  pulpit  and  through  pamphlet  said  foul  or  fool' 
ish  things  to  their  dishonour.  To  Francis  Lenton, 
writing  in  1629,  what  he  speaks  of  as — 


THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H.  75 

"loose  action,  mimic  gesture 
By  a  poor  boy  clad  in  a  princely  vesture," 

is  but  one  of  the  many — 

"tempting  baits  of  hell 
Which  draw  more  youth  unto  the  damned  cell 
Of  furious  lust,  than  all  the  devil  could  do 
Since  he  obtained  his  first  overthrow." 

Deuteronomy  was  quoted  and  the  ill'digested  learn' 
ing  of  the  period  laid  under  contribution.  Even  our 
own  time  had  not  appreciated  the  artistic  condi' 
tions  of  the  Elizabethan  and  Jacobean  drama.  One 
of  the  most  brilliant  and  intellectual  actresses  of 
this  century  had  laughed  at  the  idea  of  a  lad  of 
seventeen  or  eighteen  playing  Imogen,  or  Miranda, 
or  Rosalind.  "How  could  any  youth,  however 
gifted  and  specially  trained,  even  faintly  suggest 
these  fair  and  noble  women  to  an  audience?  .  .  . 
One  quite  pities  Shakespeare,  who  had  to  put  up 
with  seeing  his  brightest  creations  marred,  misrep' 
resented,  and  spoiled."  In  his  book  on  "Shakespeare's 
Predecessors"  Mr  John  Addington  Symonds  also 
had  talked  of  "hobbledehoys"  trying  to  represent 
the  pathos  of  Desdemona  and  Juliet's  passion.  Were 


76  THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H. 

they  right?  Are  they  right?  I  did  not  think  so  then. 
I  do  not  think  so  now.  Those  who  remember 
the  Oxford  production  of  the  "Agamemnon,"  the 
fine  utterance  and  marble  dignity  of  the  Clytemnes' 
tra,  the  romantic  and  imaginative  rendering  of  the 
prophetic  madness  of  Cassandra,  will  not  agree  with 
Lady  Martin  or  Mr  Symonds  in  their  strictures  on 
the  condition  of  the  Elizabethan  stage. 

Of  all  the  motives  of  dramatic  curiosity  used  by 
our  great  playwrights,  there  is  none  more  subtle  or 
more  fascinating  than  the  ambiguity  of  the  sexes. 
This  idea,  invented,  as  far  as  an  artistic  idea  can  be 
said  to  be  invented,  by  Lyly,  perfected  and  made  ex' 
quisite  for  us  by  Shakespeare,  seems  to  me  to  owe 
its  origin,  as  it  certainly  owes  its  possibility  of  life 
like  presentation,  to  the  circumstance  that  the  Eliza' 
bethan  stage,  like  the  stage  of  the  Greeks,  admitted 
the  appearance  of  no  female  performers.  It  is  because 
Lyly  was  writing  for  the  boyactors  of  St.  Paul's  that 
we  have  the  confused  sexes  and  complicated  loves 
of  Phillida  and  Gallathea:  it  is  because  Shakespeare 
was  writing  for  Willie  Hughes  that  Rosalind  dons 
doublet  and  hose,  and  calls  herself  Ganymede,  that 


THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H.  77 

Viola  and  Julia  put  on  pages'  dress,  that  Imogen 
steals  away  in  male  attire.  To  say  that  only  a  wom' 
an  can  portray  the  passions  of  a  woman,  and  that 
therefore  no  boy  can  play  Rosalind,  is  to  rob  the 
art  of  acting  of  all  claim  to  objectivity,  and  to  assign 
to  the  mere  accident  of  sex  what  properly  belongs 
to  imaginative  insight  and  creative  energy.  Indeed, 
if  sex  be  an  element  in  artistic  creation,  it  might 
rather  be  urged  that  the  delightful  combination  of 
wit  and  romance  which  characterises  so  many  of 
Shakespeare's  heroines  was  at  least  occasioned  if  it 
was  not  actually  caused  by  the  fact  that  the  players 
of  these  parts  were  lads  and  young  men,  whose 
passionate  purity,  quick  mobile  fancy,  and  healthy 
freedom  from  sentimentality  can  hardly  fail  to  have 
suggested  a  new  and  delightful  type  of  girlhood  or 
of  womanhood.  The  very  difference  of  sex  between 
the  player  and  the  part  he  represented  must  also,  as 
Professor  Ward  points  out,  have  constituted  "one 
more  demand  upon  the  imaginative  capacities  of 
the  spectators,"  and  must  have  kept  them  from  that 
over^realistic  identificationof  the  actor  with  his  role^ 


78  THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H. 

which  is  one  of  the  weak  points  in  modern  theatri' 
cal  criticism. 

This,  too,  must  be  granted,  that  it  was  to  these 
boyactors  that  we  owe  the  introduction  of  those 
lovely  lyrics  that  star  the  plays  of  Shakespeare, 
Dekker,  and  so  many  of  the  dramatists  of  the  period, 
those  "snatches  of  bird'Hke  or  god'like  song,"  as  Mr 
Swinburne  calls  them.  For  it  was  out  of  the  choirs 
of  the  cathedrals  and  royal  chapels  of  England  that 
most  of  these  lads  came,  and  from  their  earliest 
years  they  had  been  trained  in  the  singing  of  an' 
thems  and  madrigals,  and  in  all  that  concerns  the 
subtle  art  of  music.  Chosen  at  first  for  the  beauty 
of  their  voices,  as  well  as  for  a  certain  comeliness 
and  freshness  of  appearance,  they  were  then  in' 
structed  in  gesture,  dancing,  and  elocution,  and 
taught  to  play  both  tragedies  and  comedies  in  the 
English  as  well  as  in  the  Latin  language.  Indeed, 
acting  seems  to  have  formed  part  of  the  ordinary 
education  of  the  time,  and  to  have  been  much  stud' 
ied  not  merely  by  the  scholars  of  Eton  and  West' 
minster,  but  also  by  the  students  at  the  Universities 
of  Oxford  and  Cambridge,  some  of  whom  went  af' 


THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H.  79 

terwards  upon  the  public  stage,  as  is  becoming  not 
uncommon  in  our  own  day.  The  great  actors,  too, 
had  their  pupils  and  apprentices,  who  were  form' 
ally  bound  over  to  them  by  legal  warrant,  to  whom 
they  imparted  the  secrets  of  their  craft,  and  who 
were  so  much  valued  that  we  read  of  Henslowe, 
one  of  the  managers  of  the  Rose  Theatre,  buying  a 
trained  boy  of  the  name  of  James  Bristowe  for  eight 
pieces  of  gold.  The  relations  that  existed  between 
the  masters  and  their  pupils  seem  to  have  been  of 
the  most  cordial  and  affectionate  character.  Robin 
Armin  was  looked  upon  by  Tarlton  as  his  adopted 
son,  and  in  a  will  dated  "the  fourth  daie  of  Maie,  anno 
Domini  1605,"  Augustine  Phillips,  Shakespeare's 
dear  friend  and  fellowactor,  bequeathed  to  one  of 
his  apprentices  his  "purple  cloke,  sword,  and  dag' 
ger,"  his  "base  viall,"  and  much  rich  apparel,  and  to 
another  a  sum  of  money  and  many  beautiful  instru' 
ments  of  music,  "to  be  delivered  unto  him  at  the 
expiration  of  his  terme  of  yeres  in  his  indenture  of 
apprenticehood.*"  Now  and  then,  when  some  dar' 
ing  actor  kidnapped  a  boy  for  the  stage,  there  was 
an  outcry  or  an  investigation.  In  1 600,  for  instance. 


8o  THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H. 

a  certain  Norfolk  gentleman  of  the  name  of  Henry 
Clifton  came  to  live  in  London  in  order  that  his 
son,  then  about  thirteen  years  of  age,  might  have 
the  opportunity  of  attending  the  Bluecoat  School, 
and  from  a  petition  which  he  presented  to  the  Star 
Chamber,  and  which  has  been  recently  brought  to 
light  by  Mr  Greenstreet,  we  learn  that  as  the  boy 
was  walking  quietly  to  Christ  Church  cloister  one 
winter  morning  he  was  waylaid  by  James  Robin^ 
son,  Henry  Evans,  and  Nathaniel  Giles,  and  carried 
off  to  theBlackfriarsTheatre,"amongstea  companie 
of  lewde  and  dissolute  mercenarie  players,"  as  his 
father  calls  them,  in  order  that  he  might  be  trained 
"in  acting  of  parts  in  base  playes  and  enterludes.*" 
Hearing  of  his  son's  misadventure,  Mr  CHfton  went 
down  at  once  to  the  theatre,  and  demanded  his  sur^ 
render,  but  "the  sayd  Nathaniel  Giles,  James  Rob' 
inson  and  Henry  Evans  most  arrogantlie  then  and 
there  answered  that  they  had  authoritie  sufficient 
soe  to  take  any  noble  man's  sonne  in  this  land,"  and 
handing  the  young  schoolboy  "a  scroUe  of  paper, 
conteyning  parte  of  one  of  their  said  playes  and 
enterludes,"  commanded  him  to  learn  it  by  heart. 


THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H.  8 1 

Through  a  warrant  issued  by  Sir  John  Fortescue, 
however,  the  boy  was  restored  to  his  father  the 
next  day,  and  the  Court  of  Star  Chamber  seems  to 
have  suspended  or  cancelled  Evans'  privileges. 

The  fact  is  that,  following  a  precedent  set  by 
Richard  III,  Eli:;abeth  had  issued  a  commission  au' 
thorising  certain  persons  to  impress  into  her  service 
all  boys  who  had  beautiful  voices  that  they  might 
sing  for  her  in  her  Chapel  Royal,  and  Nathaniel 
Giles,  her  Chief  Commissioner,  finding  that  he 
could  deal  profitably  with  the  managers  of  the 
Globe  Theatre,  agreed  to  supply  them  with  per" 
sonable  and  graceful  lads  for  the  playing  of  female 
parts,  under  colour  of  taking  them  for  the  Queen's 
service.  The  actors,  accordingly,  had  a  certain 
amount  of  legal  warrant  on  their  side,  and  it  is  in- 
teresting  to  note  that  many  of  the  boys  whom  they 
carried  ofFfrom  their  schools  or  homes,  such  as  Sala' 
thielPavy,  Nat.  Field,  and  Alvery  Trussell,  became 
so  fascinated  by  their  new  art  that  they  attached 
themselves  permanently  to  the  theatre,  and  would 
not  leave  it. 

Once  it  seemed  as  if  girls  were  to  take  the  place 


82  THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H. 

of  boys  upon  the  stage,  and  among  the  christenings 
chronicled  in  the  registers  of  St.Giles\Cripplegate, 
occurs  the  following  strange  and  suggestive  entry: 
"Comedia,  bascborn,  daughter  of  Alice  Bowker 
and  William  Johnson,  one  of  the  Queen  s  plaiers, 
lo  Feb.  1 589."  But  the  child  upon  whom  such  high 
hopes  had  been  built  died  at  six  years  of  age,  and 
when,  later  on,  some  French  actresses  came  over 
and  played  at  Blackfriars,  we  learn  that  they  were 
"hissed,  hooted,  and  pippin'pelted  from  the  stage." 
I  think  that,  from  what  I  have  said  above,  we  need 
not  regret  this  in  any  way.  The  essentially  male- 
culture  of  the  English  Renaissance  found  its  fullest 
and  most  perfect  expression  by  its  own  method, 
and  in  its  own  manner. 

I  remember  I  used  to  wonder,  at  this  time,  what 
had  been  the  social  position  and  early  life  of  Willie 
Hughes  before  Shakespeare  had  met  with  him.  My 
investigations  into  the  history  of  the  boy 'actors  had 
made  me  curious  of  every  detail  about  him.  Had  he 
stood  in  the  carved  stall  of  some  gilded  choir,  read' 
ing  out  of  a  great  book  painted  with  square  scarlet 
notes  and  long  black  key'lines?  We  know  from  the 


THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H.  83 

Sonnets  how  clear  and  pure  his  voice  was,  and  what 
skill  he  had  in  the  art  of  music.  Noble  gentlemen, 
such  as  the  Earl  of  Leicester  and  Lord  Oxford,  had 
companies  of  boy-players  in  their  service  as  part 
of  their  household.  When  Leicester  went  to  the 
Netherlands  in  1585  he  brought  with  him  a  cer^ 
tain  "Will"  described  as  a  "plaier."  Was  this  Willie 
Hughes?  Had  he  acted  for  Leicester  at  Kenilworth, 
and  was  it  there  that  Shakespeare  had  first  known 
him?  Or  was  he,  like  Robin  Armin,  simply  a  lad  of 
low  degree,  but  possessing  some  strange  beauty  and 
marvellous  fascination?  It  was  evident  from  the 
early  sonnets  that  when  Shakespeare  first  came 
across  him  he  had  no  connection  whatsoever  with 
the  stage,  and  that  he  was  not  of  high  birth  has  al' 
ready  been  shewn.  I  began  to  think  of  him  not  as 
the  delicate  chorister  of  a  Royal  Chapel,  not  as  a 
petted  minion  trained  to  sing  and  dance  in  Leices' 
ter  s  stately  masque,  but  as  some  fair-haired  English 
lad  whom  in  one  of  London's  hurrying  streets,  or 
on  Windsor's  green  silent  meadows,  Shakespeare 
had  seen  and  followed,  recognising  the  artistic  pos' 
sibilities  that  lay  hidden  in  so  comely  and  gracious 


84  THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H. 

a  form,  and  divining  by  a  quick  and  subtle  instinct 
what  an  actor  the  lad  would  make  could  he  be  in' 
duced  to  go  upon  the  stage.  At  this  time  Willie 
Hughes'  father  was  dead,  as  we  learn  from  Son' 
net  XIII,  and  his  mother,  whose  remarkable  beauty- 
he  is  said  to  have  inherited,  may  have  been  induced 
to  allow  him  to  become  Shakespeare's  apprentice 
by  the  fact  that  boys  who  played  female  characters 
were  paid  extremely  large  salaries,  larger  salaries,  in' 
deed,  than  were  given  to  grown'up  actors.  Shake- 
speare's apprentice,  at  any  rate,  we  know  that  he 
became,  and  we  know  what  a  vital  factor  he  was 
in  the  development  of  Shakespeare's  art.  As  a  rule, 
a  boyactor  s  capacity  for  representing  girlish  parts 
on  the  stage  lasted  but  for  a  few  years  at  most.  Such 
characters  as  Lady  Macbeth,  Queen  Constance  and 
Volumnia,  remained  of  course  always  within  the 
reach  of  those  who  had  true  dramatic  genius  and 
noble  presence.  Absolute  youth  was  not  necessary 
here,  not  desirable  even.  But  with  Imogen,  and  Per' 
dita,  and  Juhet,  it  was  different.  "Your  beard  has 
begun  to  grow,  and  I  pray  God  your  voice  be  not 
cracked,"  says  Hamlet  mockingly  to  the  boyactor 


THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H.  85 

of  the  strolling  company  that  came  to  visit  him  at 
Elsinore;  and  certainly  when  chins  grew  rough  and 
voices  harsh  much  of  the  charm  and  grace  of  the 
performance  must  have  gone.  Hence  comes  Shake 
speare's  passionate  preoccupation  with  the  youth 
of  Willie  Hughes,  his  terror  of  old  age  and  wasting 
years,  his  wild  appeal  to  time  to  spare  the  beauty 
of  his  friend: 

"Make  glad  and  sorry  seasons  as  thou  fleetest. 
And  do  whatever  thou  wilt,  swift-footed  time, 
To  the  wide  world  and  all  her  fading  sweets; 
But  I  forbid  thee  one  most  heinous  crime: 
O  carve  not  with  thy  hours  my  Love's  fair  brow 
Nor  draw  no  lines  there  with  thine  antique  pen; 
Him  in  thy  course  untainted  do  allow 
For  beauty's  pattern  to  succeeding  men." 

Time  seems  to  have  listened  to  Shakespeare's 
prayers,  or  perhaps  Willie  Hughes  had  the  secret 
of  perpetual  youth.  After  three  years  he  is  quite 
unchanged: 

"To  me,  fair  friend,  you  never  can  be  old, 
For  as  you  were  when  first  your  eye  I  eyed. 
Such  seems  your  beauty  still.  Three  winters'  cold 


86  THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H. 

Have  from  the  forests  shook  three  summers' 

pride, 
Three  beauteous  springs  to  yellow  autumn 

turned. 
In  process  of  the  seasons  have  I  seen. 
Three  April  perfumes  in  three  hot  Junes  burned, 
Since  first  I  saw  you  fresh  which  yet  are  green." 

More  years  pass  over,  and  the  bloom  of  his  boyhood 
seems  to  be  still  with  him.  When,  in  "TheTempest," 
Shakespeare,  through  the  lips  of  Prospero,  flung 
away  the  wand  of  his  imagination  and  gave  his  pO' 
etic  sovereignty  into  the  weak,  graceful  hands  of 
Fletcher,  it  may  be  that  the  Miranda  who  stood 
wondering  by  was  none  other  than  Willie  Hughes 
himself,  and  in  the  last  sonnet  that  his  friend  ad' 
dressed  to  him,  the  enemy  that  is  feared  is  not  Time 
but  Death. 

"O  thou,  my  lovely  boy,  who  in  thy  power 
Dost  hold  time's  fickle  glass,  his  sickle  hour; 
Who  hast  by  waning  grown,  and  therein 
show'st 

'  Thy  lovers  withering  as  thy  sweet  self  grow'st; 

If  Nature,  sovereign  mistress  over  wrack, 


THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H.  87 

As  thou  goest  onwards,  still  will  pluck  thee  back, 
She  keeps  thee  to  this  purpose,  that  her  skill 
May  Time  disgrace  and  wretched  minutes  kill. 
Yet  fear  her,  O  thou  minion  of  her  pleasure! 
She  may  detain,  but  not  still  keep,  her  treasure. 
Her  audit,  though  delayed,  answered  must  be. 
And  her  quietus  is  to  render  thee." 


IV    • 

It  was  not  for  some  weeks  after  I  had  begun  my 
study  of  the  subject  that  I  ventured  to  approach 
the  curious  group  of  Sonnets  (CXXVII-CLII) 
that  deal  with  the  dark  woman  who,  Hke  a  shadow 
or  thing  of  evil  omen,  came  across  Shakespeare's 
great  romance,  and  for  a  season  stood  between  him 
and  Willie  Hughes.  They  were  obviously  printed 
out  of  their  proper  place  and  should  have  been  in- 
serted between  Sonnets  XXXIII  and  XL.  Psycho ' 
logical  and  artistic  reasons  necessitated  this  change, 
a  change  which  I  hope  will  be  adopted  by  all  future 
editors,  as  without  it  an  entirely  false  impression  is 
conveyed  of  the  nature  and  final  issue  of  this  noble 
friendship. 

Who  was  she,  this  black'browed,  olive-skinned 
woman,  with  her  amorous  mouth  "that  Love's  own 
hand  did  make,"  her  "cruel  eye,"  and  her  "foul  pride," 
her  strange  skill  on  the  virginals  and  her  false,  fasci' 
nating  nature?  An  over-curious  scholar  of  our  day 
had  seen  in  her  a  symbol  of  the  Catholic  Church, 


THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H.  89 

of  that  Bride  of  Christ  who  is  "black  but  comely." 
Professor  Minto,  following  in  the  footsteps  of 
Henry  Brown,  had  regarded  the  whole  group  of 
Sonnets  as  simply  "exercises  of  skill  undertaken  in  a 
spirit  of  wanton  defiance  and  derision  of  the  com' 
monplace."  Mr  Gerald  Massey,  without  any  histor' 
ical  proof  or  probability,  had  insisted  that  they  were 
addressed  to  the  celebrated  Lady  Rich,  the  Stella  of 
Sir  Philip  Sidney's  sonnets,  the  Philoclea  of  his  "Ar^ 
cadia,"  and  that  they  contained  no  personal  revela' 
tion  of  Shakespeare's  life  and  love,  having  been 
written  in  Lord  Pembroke's  name  and  at  his  rC' 
quest.  Mr  Tyler  had  suggested  that  they  referred 
to  one  of  Queen  Elizabeth's  maids'of-honour,  by 
name  Mary  Fitton.  But  none  of  these  explanations 
satisfied  the  conditions  of  the  problem.  The  woman 
that  came  between  Shakespeare  and  Willie  Hughes 
was  a  real  woman,  black'haired,  and  married,  and 
of  evil  repute.  Lady  Rich's  fame  was  evil  enough, 
it  is  true,  but  her  hair  was  of — 

"fine  threads  of  finest  gold, 
In  curled  knots  man's  thought  to  hold," 

and  her  shoulders  like  "white  doves  perching."  She 


go  THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H. 

was,  as  King  James  said  to  her  lover,  Lord  Mount" 
joy,"  a  fair  woman  with  a  black  soul."  As  for  Mary 
Fitton,  we  know  that  she  was  unmarried  in  1601, 
the  time  when  her  amour  with  Lord  Pembroke  was 
discovered,  and  besides,  any  theories  that  connected 
Lord  Pembroke  with  the  Sonnets  were,  as  Cyril 
Graham  had  shewn,  put  entirely  out  of  court  by  the 
fact  that  Lord  Pembroke  did  not  come  to  London 
till  they  had  been  actually  written  and  read  by 
Shakespeare  to  his  friends. 

It  was  not,  however,  her  name  that  interested 
me.  I  was  content  to  hold  with  Professor  Dowden 
that  "To  the  eyes  of  no  diver  among  the  wrecks 
of  time  will  that  curious  talisman  gleam.''  What  I 
wanted  to  discover  was  the  nature  of  her  influence 
over  Shakespeare,  as  well  as  the  characteristics  of 
her  personality.  Two  things  were  certain:  she  was 
much  older  than  the  poet,  and  the  fascination  that 
she  exercised  over  him  was  at  first  purely  intellec 
tual.  He  began  by  feeling  no  physical  passion  for 
her.  "I  do  not  love  thee  with  mine  eyes,"  he  says: 

"Nor  are  mine  ears  with  thy  tongue's  tune 
delighted; 


THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H.  9 1 

Nor  tender  feeling  to  base  touches  prone, 
Nor  taste,  nor  smell,  desire  to  be  invited 
To  any  sensual  feast  with  thee  alone." 

He  did  not  even  think  her  beautiful: 

"My  mistress'  eyes  are  nothing  like  the  sun; 
Coral  is  far  more  red  than  her  lips'  red: 
If  snow  be  white,  why  then  her  breasts  are  dun; 
If  hairs  be  wires,  black  wires  grow  on  her 
head." 

He  has  his  moments  of  loathing  for  her,  for,  not  con' 
tent  with  enslaving  the  soul  of  Shakespeare,  she 
seems  to  have  sought  to  snare  the  senses  of  Willie 
Hughes.  Then  Shakespeare  cries  aloud, — 

"Two  loves  I  have  of  comfort  and  despair, 
Which  like  two  spirits  do  suggest  me  still: 
The  better  angel  is  a  man  right  fair. 
The  worser  spirit  a  woman  colour  d  ill. 
To  win  me  soon  to  hell,  my  female  evil 
Tempteth  my  better  angel  from  my  side. 
And  would  corrupt  my  saint  to  be  a  devil. 
Wooing  his  purity  with  her  foul  pride." 

Then  he  sees  her  as  she  really  is,  the  "bay  where  all 
men  ride,"  the  "wide  world's  common  place,"  the 
woman  who  is  in  the"  very  refuse"  of  her  evil  deeds, 


92  THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H. 

and  who  is  "as  black  as  hell,  as  dark  as  night."  Then 
it  is  that  he  pens  that  great  sonnet  upon  Lust  ("Th' 
expense  of  spirit  in  a  waste  of  shame"),  of  which 
Mr  Theodore  Watts  says  rightly  that  it  is  the  great' 
est  sonnet  ever  written.  And  it  is  then,  also,  that  he 
offers  to  mortgage  his  very  life  and  genius  to  her  if 
she  will  but  restore  to  him  that  "sweetest  friend" 
of  whom  she  had  robbed  him. 

To  compass  this  end  he  abandons  himself  to  her, 
feigns  to  be  full  of  an  absorbing  and  sensuous  pas' 
sion  of  possession,  forges  false  words  of  love,  lies  to 
her,  and  tells  her  that  he  lies. 

"My  thoughts  and  my  discourse  as  madmen's  are. 
At  random  from  the  truth  vainly  expressed; 
For  I  have  sworn  thee  fair,  and  thought  thee 

bright. 
Who  art  as  black  as  hell,  as  dark  as  night." 

Rather  than  suffer  his  friend  to  be  treacherous  to 
him,  he  will  himself  be  treacherous  to  his  friend. 
To  shield  his  purity,  he  will  himself  be  vile.  He 
knew  the  weakness  of  the  boy 'actor's  nature,  his 
susceptibility  to  praise,  his  inordinate  love  of  admi' 
ration,  and  deliberately  set  himself  to  fascinate  the 
woman  who  had  come  between  them. 


THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H.  93 

It  is  never  with  impunity  that  one's  lips  say 
Love's  Litany.  Words  have  their  mystical  power 
over  the  soul,  and  form  can  create  the  feeling  from 
which  it  should  have  sprung.  Sincerity  itself,  the 
ardent,  momentary  sincerity  of  the  artist,  is  often 
the  unconscious  result  of  style,  and  in  the  case  of 
those  rare  temperaments  that  are  exquisitely  sus' 
ceptible  to  the  influences  of  language,  the  use  of  cer" 
tain  phrases  and  modes  of  expression  can  stir  the 
very  pulse  of  passion,  can  send  the  red  blood  cours' 
ing  through  the  veins,  and  can  transform  into  a 
strange  sensuous  energy  what  in  its  origin  had  been 
mere  esthetic  impulse,  and  desire  of  art.  So,  at  least, 
it  seems  to  have  been  with  Shakespeare.  He  begins 
by  pretending  to  love,  wears  a  lover's  apparel  and 
has  a  lover  s  words  upon  his  lips.  What  does  it 
matter?  It  is  only  acting,  only  a  comedy  in  real  life. 
Suddenly  he  finds  that  what  his  tongue  had  spoken 
his  soul  had  listened  to,  and  that  the  raiment  that 
he  had  put  on  for  disguise  is  a  plague-stricken  and 
poisonous  thing  that  eats  into  his  flesh,  and  that  he 
cannot  throw  away.  Then  comes  Desire,  with  its 
many  maladies,  and  Lust  that  makes  one  love  all  that 


94  THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H. 

one  loathes,  and  Shame,  with  its  ashen  face  and 

secret  smile.  He  is  enthralled  by  this  dark  woman, 

is  for  a  season  separated  from  his  friend,  and  be 

comes  the  "vassal'wretch"  of  one  whom  he  knows 

to  be  evil  and  perverse  and  unworthy  of  his  love, 

as  of  the  love  of  Willie  Hughes.   "O,  from  what 

power,"  he  says, — 

"hast  thou  this  powerful  might. 
With  insufficiency  my  heart  to  sway? 
To  make  me  give  the  lie  to  my  true  sight, 
And  swear  that  brightness  does  not  grace  the 

day? 
Whence  hast  thou  this  becoming  of  things  ill. 
That  in  the  very  refuse  of  thy  deeds 
There  is  such  strength  and  warrantise  of  skill 
That,  in  my  mind,  thy  worst  all  best  exceeds?" 

He  is  keenly  conscious  of  his  own  degradation,  and 
finally,  realising  that  his  genius  is  nothing  to  her 
compared  to  the  physical  beauty  of  the  young  ac- 
tor, he  cuts  with  a  quick  knife  the  bond  that  binds 
him  to  her,  and  in  this  bitter  sonnet  bids  her  fare- 
well: — 

"In  loving  thee  thou  know'st  I  am  forsworn. 
But  thou  art  twice  forsworn,  to  me  love 
swearing; 


THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H.  95 

In  act  thy  bed-vow  broke,  and  new  faith  torn, 
In  vowing  new  hate  after  new  love  bearing. 
But  why  of  two  oaths'  breach  do  I  accuse 

thee, 
When  I  break  twenty?  I  am  perjured  most; 
For  all  my  vows  are  oaths  but  to  misuse  thee, 
And  all  my  honest  faith  in  thee  is  lost: 
For  I  have  sworn  deep  oaths  of  thy  deep 

kindness, 
Oaths  of  thy  love,  thy  truth,  thy  constancy; 
And,  to  enlighten  thee,  gave  eyes  to  blindness. 
Or  made  them  swear  against  the  thing  they 

see; 
For  I  have  sworn  thee  fair;  more  perjur'd  I, 
To  swear  against  the  truth  so  foul  a  He!" 

His  attitude  towards  Willie  Hughes  in  the  whole 
matter  shews  at  once  the  fervour  and  the  self- abne- 
gation of  the  great  love  he  bore  him.  There  is  a  poig- 
nant touch  of  pathos  in  the  close  of  this  sonnet: 

"Those  pretty  wrongs  that  liberty  commits. 
When  I  am  sometime  absent  from  thy  heart. 
Thy  beauty  and  thy  years  full  well  befits. 
For  still  temptation  follows  where  thou  art. 
Gentle  thou  art,  and  therefore  to  be  won, 
Beauteous  thou  art,  therefore  to  be  assailed; 


96  THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H. 

And  when  a  woman  woos,  what  woman's  son 
Will  sourly  leave  her  till  she  have  prevailed? 
Ay  me !  but  yet  thou  mightst  my  seat  forbear, 
And  chide  thy  beauty  and  thy  straying  youth, 
Who  lead  thee  in  their  riot  even  there 
Where  thou  art  fore  d  to  break  a  two-fold 
truth, — 

Hers,  by  thy  beauty  tempting  her  to  thee, 
Thine,  by  thy  beauty  being  false  to  me." 

But  here  he  makes  it  manifest  that  his  forgiveness 
was  full  and  complete: 

"No  more  be  griev  d  at  that  which  thou 

hast  done: 
Roses  have  thorns,  and  silver  fountains  mud; 
Clouds  and  eclipses  stain  both  moon  and  sun. 
And  loathsome  canker  lives  in  sweetest  bud. 
All  men  make  faults,  and  even  I  in  this. 
Authorising  thy  trespass  with  compare. 
Myself  corrupting,  salving  thy  amiss, 
Excusing  thy  sins  more  than  thy  sins  are; 
For  to  thy  sensual  fault  I  bring  in  sense,-^ 
Thy  adverse  party  is  thy  advocate, — 
And  'gainst  myself  a  lawful  plea  commence: 
Such  civil  war  is  in  my  love  and  hate, 
That  I  an  accessary  needs  must  be 
To  that  sweet  thief  which  sourly  robs  from 
me." 


THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H.  97 

Shortly  afterwards  Shakespeare  left  London  for 
Stratford  (Sonnets  XLIII-LII),  and  when  he  re' 
turned  Willie  Hughes  seems  to  have  grown  tired 
of  the  woman  who  for  a  little  time  had  fascinated 
him.  Her  name  is  never  mentioned  again  in  the  Son' 
nets,  nor  is  there  any  allusion  made  to  her.  She  had 
passed  out  of  their  lives. 

But  who  was  she?  And,  even  if  her  name  has 
not  come  down  to  us,  were  there  any  allusions  to 
her  in  contemporary  literature?  It  seems  to  me  that 
although  better  educated  than  most  of  the  women 
of  her  time,  she  was  not  nobly  born,  but  was  prob' 
ably  the  profligate  wife  of  some  old  and  wealthy 
citizen.  We  know  that  women  of  this  class,  which 
was  then  first  rising  into  social  prominence,  were 
strangely  fascinated  by  the  new  art  of  stage  play 
ing.  They  were  to  be  found  almost  every  afternoon 
at  the  theatre,  when  dramatic  performances  were 
being  given,  and  "The  Actors'  Remonstrance"  is 
eloquent  on  the  subject  of  their  amours  with  the 
young  actors. 

Cranley  in  his"Amanda"  tellsusofone  who  loved 
to  mimic  the  actor  s  disguises,  appearing  one  day 


98  THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H. 

"embroidered,  laced,  perfumed,  in  glittering  show 
...  as  brave  as  any  Countess,"  and  the  next  day, 
"all  in  mourning,  black  and  sad,"  now  in  the  grey 
cloak  of  a  country  wench,  and  now  "in  the  neat 
habit  of  a  citizen."  She  was  a  curious  woman,  "more 
changeable  and  wavering  than  the  moon,"  and  the 
books  that  she  loved  to  read  were  Shakespeare's 
"Venus  and  Adonis,"  Beaumont's  "Salmacis  and 
Hermaphroditus,"  amorous  pamphlets,  and  "songs 
of  love  and  sonnets  exquisite."  These  sonnets,  that 
were  to  her  the  "  bookes  of  her  devotion"  were  surely 
none  other  but  Shakespeare's  own,  for  the  whole 
description  reads  like  the  portrait  of  the  woman  who 
fell  in  love  with  Willie  Hughes,  and,  lest  we  should 
have  any  doubt  on  the  subject,  Cranley,  borrow 
ing  Shakespeare's  play  on  words,  tells  us  that,  in 
her  "proteus'like  strange  shapes,"  she  is  one  who — 
"Changes  hews  with  the  chameleon." 
Manningham's  Table-book,  also,  contains  a  clear 
allusion  to  the  same  story.  Manningham  was  a  stu' 
dent  at  the  Middle  Temple  with  Sir  Thomas  Over' 
bury  and  Edmund  Curie,  whose  chambers  he  seems 
to  have  shared;  and  his  Diary  is  still  preserved  among 


THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H.  99 

the  Harleian  MSS.  at  the  British  Museum,  a  small 
duodecimo  book  written  in  a  fair  and  tolerably  leg' 
ible  hand,  and  containing  many  unpublished  anec 
dotes  about  Shakespeare,  Sir  Walter  Raleigh,  Spen^ 
ser,  Ben  Jonson  and  others.  The  dates,  which  are  in' 
serted  with  much  care,  extend  from  January  1600-1 
to  April  1603,  and  under  the  heading  "March  13, 
1601,"  Manningham  tells  us  that  he  heard  from  a 
member  of  Shakespeare's  company  that  a  certain 
citizen's  wife  being  at  the  Globe  Theatre  one  after' 
noon,  fell  in  love  with  one  of  the  actors,  and  "grew 
so  farre  in  liking  with  him,  that  before  shee  went 
from  the  play  shee  appointed  him  to  come  that  night 
unto  hir,"  but  that  Shakespeare  "overhearing  their 
conclusion"  anticipated  his  friend  and  came  first  to 
the  lady's  house,"  went  before  and  was  entertained," 
as  Manningham  puts  it,  with  some  added  looseness 
of  speech  which  it  is  unnecessary  to  quote. 

It  seemed  to  me  that  we  had  here  a  common  and 
distorted  version  of  the  story  that  is  revealed  to  us 
in  the  Sonnets,  the  story  of  the  dark  woman's  love 
for  Willie  Hughes,  and  Shakespeare's  mad  attempt 
to  make  her  love  him  in  his  friend's  stead.  It  was 


lOO  THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H. 

not,  of  course,  necessary  to  accept  it  as  absolutely- 
true  in  every  detail.  According  to  Manningham's 
informant,  for  instance,  the  name  of  the  actor  in 
question  was  not  Willie  Hughes,  but  Richard  Bur" 
bage.  Tavern  gossip,  however,  is  proverbially  in- 
accurate, and  Burbage  was,  no  doubt,  dragged  into 
the  story  to  give  point  to  the  foolish  jest  about 
William  the  Conqueror  and  Richard  the  Third, 
with  which  the  entry  in  Manningham's  Diary  ends. 
Burbage  was  our  first  great  tragic  actor,  but  it  needed 
all  his  genius  to  counterbalance  the  physical  defects 
of  low  stature  and  corpulent  figure  under  which 
he  laboured,  and  he  was  not  the  sort  of  man  who 
would  have  fascinated  the  dark  woman  of  the  Son- 
nets,  or  would  have  cared  to  be  fascinated  by  her. 
There  was  no  doubt  that  Willie  Hughes  was  re 
ferred  to,  and  the  private  diary  of  a  young  law  stu' 
dent  of  the  time  thus  curiously  corroborated  Cyril 
Graham's  wonderful  guess  at  the  secret  of  Shake' 
speare's  great  romance.  Indeed,  when  taken  in  con- 
junction  with  "Amanda,''  Manningham's  Tabic 
book  seemed  to  me  to  be  an  extremely  strong  link 
in  the  chain  of  evidence,  and  to  place  the  new  in- 


THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H.  lOI 

terpretation  of  the  Sonnets  on  something  like  a  se^ 

cure  historic  basis,  the  fact  that  Cranley's  poem  was 

not  published  till  after  Shakespeare's  death  being 

really  rather  in  favour  of  this  view,  as  it  was  not 

likely  that  he  would  have  ventured  during  the  life' 

time  of  the  great  dramatist  to  revive  the  memory 

of  this  tragic  and  bitter  story. 

This  passion  for  the  dark  lady  also  enabled  me 

to  fix  with  still  greater  certainty  the  date  of  the 

Sonnets.  From  internal  evidence,  from  the  char' 

acteristics  of  language,  style,  and  the  like,  it  was 

evident  that  they  belonged  to  Shakespeare's  early 

period,  the  period  of  "Love's  Labour's  Lost"  and 

"Venus  and  Adonis."  With  the  play,  indeed,  they 

are  intimately  connected.  They  display  the  same  del' 

icate  euphuism,  the  same  delight  in  fanciful  phrase 

and  curious  expression,  the  artistic  wilfulness  and 

studied  graces  of  the  same  "fair  tongue,  conceit's 

expositor."  Rosaline,  the — 

"whitely  wanton  with  a  velvet  brow. 
With  two  pitch'balls  stuck  in  her  face  for  eyes," 

who  is  born  "to  make  black  fair,"  and  whose  "fa' 
vour  turns  the  fashion  of  the  days,"  is  the  dark  lady 


I02  THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H. 

of  the  Sonnets  who  makes  black  "beauty's  succes' 
sive  heir."  In  the  comedy  as  well  as  in  the  poems 
we  have  that  half-sensuous  philosophy  that  exalts 
the  judgment  of  the  senses  "above  all  slower,  more 
toilsome  means  of  knowledge/'  and  Berowne  is  per' 
haps,  as  Mr  Pater  suggests,  a  reflex  of  Shakespeare 
himself  "when  he  has  just  become  able  to  stand 
aside  from  and  estimate  the  first  period  of  his  poetry!' 

Now  though  "Love's  Labour's  Lost"  was  not  pub' 
lishedtilli598,whenitwasbroughtout"newliecor' 
rected  and  augmented"  by  Cuthbert  Burby,  there  is 
no  doubt  that  it  was  written  and  produced  on  th* 
stage  at  a  much  earlier  date,  probably,  as  Professoi 
Dowden  points  out,  in  1588-9.  If  this  be  so,  it  is 
clear  that  Shakespeare's  first  meeting  with  Willie 
Hughes  must  have  been  in  1585,  and  it  is  just  pos' 
sible  that  this  young  actor  may,  after  all,  have  been 
in  his  boyhood  the  musician  of  Lord  Essex. 

It  is  clear,  at  any  rate,  that  Shakespeare's  love  for 
the  dark  lady  must  have  passed  away  before  1 594. 
In  this  year  there  appeared,  under  the  editorship  of 
Hadrian  Dorell,  that  fascinating  poem,  or  series  of 
poems,  "Willobie  his  Avisa,"  which  is  described  by 


THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H.  IO3 

Mr  Swinburne  as  the  one  contemporary  book 
which  has  been  supposed  to  throw  any  direct  or 
indirect  Hght  on  the  mystic  matter  of  the  Sonnets. 
In  it  we  learn  how  a  young  gentleman  of  St.  John  s 
College,  Oxford,  by  name  Henry  Willobie,  fell  in 
love  with  a  woman  so  "fair  and  chaste"  that  he  called 
her  Avisa,  either  because  such  beauty  as  hers  had 
never  been  seen,  or  because  she  fled  like  a  bird  from 
the  snare  of  his  passion,  and  spread  her  wings  for 
flight  when  he  ventured  but  to  touch  her  hand. 
Anxious  to  win  his  mistress  he  consults  his  famil' 
iar  friend  W.  S.,"  who  not  long  before  had  tried  the 
curtesy  of  the  like  passion,  and  was  now  newly  re 
covered  of  the  like  infection."  Shakespeare  encour' 
ages  him  in  the  siege  that  he  is  laying  to  the  Castle  of 
Beauty,  telling  him  that  every  woman  is  to  be  wooed, 
and  every  woman  to  be  won;  views  this  "loving 
comedy"  from  far  off,  in  order  to  see  "whether  it 
would  sort  to  a  happier  end  for  this  new  actor  than 
it  did  for  the  old  player,"  and  "enlargeth  the  wound 
with  the  sharpe  razor  of  a  willing  conceit,"  feeling  the 
purely  ssthetic  interest  of  the  artist  in  the  moods 
and  emotions  of  others.  It  is  unnecessary,  however, 


I04  THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H. 

to  enter  more  fully  into  this  curious  passage  in  Shake' 
speare's  life,  as  all  that  I  wanted  to  point  out  was 
that  in  1 594  he  had  been  cured  of  his  infatuation  for 
the  dark  lady,  and  had  already  been  acquainted  for 
at  least  three  years  with  Willie  Hughes. 

My  whole  scheme  of  the  Sonnets  was  now  com' 
plete,  and,  by  placing  those  that  refer  to  the  dark 
lady  in  their  proper  order  and  position,  I  saw  the 
perfect  unity  and  completeness  of  the  whole.  The 
drama — for  indeed  they  formed  a  drama  and  a  soul's 
tragedy  of  fiery  passion  and  of  noble  thought — is 
divided  into  four  scenes  or  acts.  In  the  first  of  these 
( Sonnets  I-XXXII )  Shakespeare  invites  Willie 
Hughes  to  go  upon  the  stage  as  an  actor,  and  to  put 
to  the  service  of  Art  his  wonderful  physical  beauty, 
and  his  exquisite  grace  of  youth,  before  passion  has 
robbed  him  of  the  one,  and  time  taken  from  him  the 
other.  Willie  Hughes,  after  a  time,  consents  to  be  a 
player  in  Shakespeare's  company,  and  soon  becomes 
the  very  centre  and  keynote  of  his  inspiration.  Sud' 
denly,  in  one  red'rose  July  (Sonnets  XXXIII-LII, 
LXI,  and  CXXVII-CLII)  there  comes  to  the  Globe 
Theatre  a  dark  woman  with  wonderful  eyes,  who 


THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H.  IO5 

falls  passionately  in  love  with  Willie  Hughes. 
Shakespeare,  sick  with  the  malady  of  jealousy,  and 
made  mad  by  many  doubts  and  fears,  tries  to  fasci' 
nate  the  woman  who  had  come  between  him  and 
his  friend.  The  love,  that  is  at  first  feigned,  becomes 
real,  and  he  finds  himself  enthralled  and  dominated 
by  a  woman  whom  he  knows  to  be  evil  and  un' 
worthy.  To  her  the  genius  of  a  man  is  as  nothing 
compared  to  a  boy's  beauty.  Willie  Hughes  be 
comes  for  a  time  her  slave  and  the  toy  of  her  fancy, 
and  the  second  act  ends  with  Shakespeare's  depart' 
ure  from  London.  In  the  third  act  her  influence 
has  passed  away.  Shakespeare  returns  to  London, 
and  renews  his  friendship  with  Willie  Hughes^  to 
whom  he  promises  immortality  in  his  plays.  Mar' 
lowe,  hearing  of  the  wonder  and  grace  of  the  young 
actor,  lures  him  away  from  the  Globe  Theatre  to 
play  Gaveston  in  the  tragedy  of  "Edward  II,"  and  for 
the  second  time  Shakespeare  is  separated  from  his 
friend.  The  last  act  (Sonnets  C-CXXVI)  tells 
us  of  the  return  of  Willie  Hughes  to  Shakespeare's 
company.  Evil  rumour  had  now  stained  the  white 
purity  of  his  name,  but  Shakespeare's  love  still  en' 


I06  THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H. 

dures  and  is  perfect.  Of  the  mystery  of  this  lovCj 
and  of  the  mystery  of  passion,  we  are  told  strange 
and  marvellous  things,  and  the  Sonnets  conclude 
with  an  envoi  of  twelve  lines,  whose  motive  is  the 
triumph  of  Beauty  over  Time,  and  of  Death  over 
Beauty. 

And  what  had  been  the  end  of  him  who  had 
been  so  dear  to  the  soul  of  Shakespeare,  and  who 
by  his  presence  and  passion  had  given  reality  to 
Shakespeare's  art?  When  the  Civil  War  broke  out, 
the  English  actors  took  the  side  of  their  king,  and 
many  of  them,  like  Robinson  foully  slain  by  Major 
Harrison  at  the  taking  of  Basing  House,  laid  down 
their  lives  in  the  king's  service.  Perhaps  on  the 
trampled  heath  of  Marston,  or  on  the  bleak  hills  of 
Naseby,  the  dead  body  of  Willie  Hughes  had  been 
found  by  some  of  the  rough  peasants  of  the  district, 
his  gold  hair  "dabbled  with  blood,"  and  his  breast 
pierced  with  many  wounds.  Or  it  may  be  that  the 
Plague,  which  was  very  frequent  in  London  at  the 
beginning  of  the  seventeenth  century,  and  was  in- 
deed regarded  by  many  of  the  Christians  as  a  judg- 
ment sent  on  the  city  for  its  love  of  "vaine  plaies 


THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H.  IO7 

and  idolatrous  shewes,"  had  touched  the  lad  while 
he  was  acting,  and  he  had  crept  home  to  his  lodging 
to  die  there  alone,  Shakespeare  being  far  away  at 
Stratford,  and  those  who  had  flocked  in  such  num' 
bers  to  see  him,  the  "gazers''  whom,  as  the  Sonnets 
tell  us,  he  had  "  led  astray,"  being  too  much  afraid  of 
contagion  to  come  near  him.  A  story  of  this  kind 
was  current  at  the  time  about  a  young  actor,  and 
was  made  much  use  of  by  the  Puritans  in  their  at' 
tempts  to  stifle  the  free  development  of  the  English 
Renaissance.  Yet,  surely,  had  this  actor  been  Willie 
Hughes,  tidings  of  his  tragic  death  would  have  been 
speedily  brought  to  Shakespeare  as  he  lay  dream^ 
ing  under  the  mulberry  tree  in  his  garden  at  New 
Place,  and  in  an  elegy  as  sweet  as  that  written  by 
Milton  on  Edward  King,  he  would  have  mourned 
for  the  lad  who  had  brought  such  joy  and  sorrow 
into  his  life,  and  whose  connection  with  his  art  had 
been  of  so  vital  and  intimate  a  character.  Some^ 
thing  made  me  feel  certain  that  Willie  Hughes  had 
survived  Shakespeare,  and  had  fulfilled  in  some 
measure  the  high  prophecies  the  poet  had  made 
about  him,  and  one  evening  the  true  secret  of  his 
end  flashed  across  me. 


I08  THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H. 

He  had  been  one  of  those  English  actors  who  in 
i6i  I,  the  year  of  Shakespeare's  retirement  from  the 
stage,  went  across  sea  to  Germany  and  played  be 
fore  the  great  Duke  Henry  Julius  of  Brunswick, 
himself  a  dramatist  of  no  mean  order,  and  at  the 
Court  of  that  strange  Elector  of  Brandenburg,  who 
was  so  enamoured  of  beauty  that  he  was  said  to 
have  bought  for  his  weight  in  amber  the  young  son 
of  a  travelling  Greek  merchant,  and  to  have  given 
pageants  in  honour  of  his  slave  all  through  that 
dreadful  famine  year  of  1606-7,  when  the  people 
died  of  hunger  in  the  very  streets  of  the  town,  and 
for  the  space  of  seven  months  there  was  no  rain. 
The  Library  at  Cassel  contains  to  the  present  day  a 
copy  of  the  first  edition  of  Marlowe's  "Edward  II," 
the  only  copy  in  existence,  Mr  Bullen  tells  us.  Who 
could  have  brought  it  to  that  town,  but  he  who  had 
created  the  part  of  the  king's  minion,  and  for  whom 
indeed  it  had  been  written?  Those  stained  and 
yellow  pages  had  once  been  touched  by  his  white 
hands.  We  also  know  that  "Romeo  and  Juliet,"  a 
play  specially  connected  with  Willie  Hughes,  was 
brought  out  at  Dresden  in  161 3,  along  with  "Ham^ 


THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H.  IO9 

let''  and  "King  Lear,"  and  certain  of  Marlowe's 
plays,  and  it  was  surely  to  none  other  than  WHlie 
Hughes  himself  that  in  1617  the  death-mask  of 
Shakespeare  was  brought  by  one  of  the  suite  of  the 
English  ambassador,  pale  token  of  the  passing  away 
of  the  great  poet  who  had  so  dearly  loved  him.  In' 
deed  there  was  something  peculiarly  fitting  in  the 
idea  that  the  boyactor,  whose  beauty  had  been 
so  vital  an  element  in  the  realism  and  romance  of 
Shakespeare's  art,  had  been  the  first  to  have  brought 
to  Germany  the  seed  of  the  new  culture,  and  was 
in  his  way  the  precursor  of  the  Aufkldrung  or  II' 
lumination  of  the  eighteenth  century,  that  splendid 
movement  which,  though  begun  by  Lessing  and 
Herder,  and  brought  to  its  full  and  perfect  issue  by 
Goethe,  was  in  no  small  part  helped  on  by  a  young 
actor — Friedrich  Schroeder — who  awoke  the  pop' 
ular  consciousness,  and  by  means  of  the  feigned  pas' 
sions  and  mimetic  methods  of  the  stage  showed  the 
intimate,  the  vital,  connection  between  life  and  lit' 
erature.  If  this  was  so, — and  there  was  certainly 
no  evidence  against  it, — it  was  not  improbable  that 
Willie  Hughes  was  one  of  those  English  comedians 


no  THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H. 

(mimi  quidam  ex  Britannia,  as  the  old  chronicle 
calls  them),  who  were  slain  at  Nuremberg  in  a  sud' 
den  uprising  of  the  people,  and  were  secretly  buried 
in  a  little  vineyard  outside  the  city  by  some  young 
men  "who  had  found  pleasure  in  their  performances, 
and  of  whom  some  had  sought  to  be  instructed 
in  the  mysteries  of  the  new  art."  Certainly  no  more 
fitting  place  could  there  be  for  him  to  whom  Shake 
speare  said  "thou  art  all  my  art,"  than  this  little 
vineyard  outside  the  city  walls.  For  was  it  not  from 
the  sorrows  of  Dionysos  that  Tragedy  sprang?  Was 
not  the  light  laughter  of  Comedy,  with  its  careless 
merriment  and  quick  replies,  first  heard  on  the  lips 
of  the  Sicilian  vine-dressers?  Nay,  did  not  the  pur- 
ple and  red  stain  of  the  wincfroth  on  face  and  limbs 
give  the  first  suggestion  of  the  charm  and  fascina' 
tion  of  disguise? — the  desire  forself-concealment,  the 
sense  of  the  value  of  objectivity,  thus  showing  itself 
in  the  rude  beginnings  of  the  art.  At  any  rate,  wher' 
ever  he  lay — whether  in  the  little  vineyard  at  the 
gate  of  the  Gothic  town,  or  in  some  dim  London 
churchyard  amidst  the  roar  and  bustle  of  our  great 
city — no  gorgeous  monument  marked  his  resting 


THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H.  Ill 

olace.  His  true  tomb,  as  Shakespeare  saw,  was  the 
poet's  verse,  his  true  monument  the  permanence 
of  the  drama.  So  had  it  been  with  others  whose 
beauty  had  given  a  new  creative  impulse  to  their 
age.  The  ivory  body  of  the  Bithynian  slave  rots  in 
the  green  ooze  of  the  Nile,  and  on  the  yellow  hills 
of  the  Cerameicus  is  strewn  the  dust  of  the  young 
Athenian;  but  Antinous  lives  in  sculpture,  and 
Charmides  in  philosophy. 


V 

A  young  Elizabethan,  who  was  enamoured  of  a 
girl  so  white  that  he  named  her  Alba,  has  left  on 
record  the  impression  produced  on  him  by  one  of 
the  first  performances  of  "Love's  Labour  sLostr  Ad' 
mirable  though  the  actors  were,  and  they  played 
"in  cunning  wise,''  he  tells  us,  especially  those  who 
took  the  lovers'  parts,  he  was  conscious  that  every 
thing  was  "feigned,"  that  nothing  came  "from  the 
heart,"  that  though  they  appeared  to  grieve  they 
"felt  no  care,"  and  were  merely  presenting  "a  show 
in  jest."  Yet,  suddenly,  this  fanciful  comedy  of  un^ 
real  romance  became  to  him,  as  he  sat  in  the  audi' 
ence,  the  real  tragedy  of  his  life.  The  moods  of  his 
own  soul  seemed  to  have  taken  shape  and  sub' 
stance,  and  to  be  moving  before  him.  His  grief  had  a 
mask  that  smiled,  and  his  sorrow  wore  gay  raiment. 
Behind  the  bright  and  quickly^changing  pageant  of 
the  stage,  he  saw  himself,  as  one  sees  one's  image  in 
a  fantastic  glass.  The  very  words  that  came  to  the 


THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H.  II3 

actors'  lips  were  wrung  out  of  his  pain.  Their  false 
tears  were  of  his  shedding. 

There  are  few  of  us  who  have  not  felt  some' 
thing  akin  to  this.  We  become  lovers  when  we  see 
Romeo  and  Juliet,  and  Hamlet  makes  us  students. 
The  blood  of  Duncan  is  upon  our  hands,  with  Ti' 
mon  we  rage  against  the  world,  and  when  Lear 
wanders  out  upon  the  heath  the  terror  of  madness 
touches  us.  Ours  is  the  white  sinlessness  of  Desde-- 
mona,  and  ours,  also,  the  sin  of  lago.  Art,  even  the 
art  of  fullest  scope  and  widest  vision,  can  never 
really  show  us  the  external  world.  All  that  it  shows 
us  is  our  own  soul,  the  one  world  of  which  we  have 
any  real  cognizance.  And  the  soul  itself,  the  soul  of 
each  one  of  us,  is  to  each  one  of  us  a  mystery.  It 
hides  in  the  dark  and  broods,  and  consciousness  can' 
not  tell  us  of  its  workings.  Consciousness,  indeed, 
is  quite  inadequate  to  explain  the  contents  of  pep 
sonality.  It  is  Art,  and  Art  only,  that  reveals  us  to 
ourselves. 

We  sit  at  the  play  with  the  woman  we  love,  or 
listen  to  the  music  in  some  Oxford  garden,  or  stroll 
with  our  friend  through  the  cool  galleries  of  the 


114  THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H. 

Pope's  house  at  Rome,  and  suddenly  we  become 
aware  that  we  have  passions  of  which  we  have 
never  dreamed,  thoughts  that  make  us  afraid,  pleas' 
ures  whose  secret  has  been  denied  to  us,  sorrows 
that  have  been  hidden  from  our  tears.  The  actor  is 
unconscious  of  our  presence:  the  musician  is  think' 
ing  of  the  subtlety  of  the  fugue,  of  the  tone  of  his 
instrument;  the  marble  gods  that  smile  so  curiously 
at  us  are  made  of  insensate  stone.  But  they  have 
given  form  and  substance  to  what  was  within  us; 
they  have  enabled  us  to  realise  our  personality;  and 
a  sense  of  perilous  joy,  or  some  touch  or  thrill  of 
pain,  or  that  strange  self'pity  that  man  so  often  feels 
for  himself,  comes  over  us  and  leaves  us  different. 
Some  such  impression  the  Sonnets  of  Shakespeare 
had  certainly  produced  on  me.  As  from  opal  dawns 
to  sunsets  of  withered  rose  I  read  and  re-read  them 
in  garden  or  chamber,  it  seemed  to  me  that  I  was 
deciphering  the  story  of  a  life  that  had  once  been 
mine,  unrolling  the  record  of  a  romance  that,  with' 
out  my  knowing  it,  had  coloured  the  very  texture 
of  my  nature,  had  dyed  it  with  strange  and  subtle 
dyes.  Art,  as  so  often  happens,  had  taken  the  place 


THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H.  II5 

of  personal  experience.  I  felt  as  if  I  had  been  ini- 
tiated  into  the  secret  of  that  passionate  friendship, 
that  love  of  beauty  and  beauty  of  love,  of  which 
Marsilio  Ficino  tells  us,  and  of  which  the  Sonnets, 
in  their  noblest  and  purest  significance,  may  be  held 
to  be  the  perfect  expression. 

Yes:  I  had  lived  it  all.  I  had  stood  in  the  round 
theatre  with  its  open  roof  arid  fluttering  banners, 
had  seen  the  stage  draped  with  black  for  a  tragedy, 
or  set  with  gay  garlands  for  some  brighter  show. 
The  young  gallants  came  out  with  their  pages,  and 
took  their  seats  in  front  of  the  tawny  curtain  that 
hung  from  the  satyr^carved  pillars  of  the  inner 
scene.  They  were  insolent  and  debonair  in  their 
fantastic  dresses.  Some  of  them  wore  French  love 
locks,  and  white  doublets  stiff  with  Italian  embroi' 
dery  of  gold  thread,  and  long  hose  of  blue  or  pale 
yellow  silk.  Others  were  all  in  black,  and  carried 
huge  plumed  hats.  These  affected  the  Spanish  fash' 
ion.  As  they  played  at  cards,  and  blew  thin  wreaths 
of  smoke  from  the  tiny  pipes  that  the  pages  lit  for 
them,  the  truant  prentices  and  idle  schoolboys  that 
thronged  the  yard  mocked  them.  But  they  only 


Il6  THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H. 

smiled  at  each  other.  In  the  side  boxes  some  masked 
women  were  sitting.  One  of  them  was  waiting  with 
hungry  eyes  and  bitten  lips  for  the  drawing  back  of 
the  curtain.  As  the  trumpet  sounded  for  the  third 
time  she  leant  forward,  and  I  saw  her  olive  skin  and 
raven  S'Wing  hair.  I  knew  her.  She  had  marred  for 
a  season  the  great  friendship  of  my  life.  Yet  there 
was  something  about  her  that  fascinated  me. 

The  play  changed  according  to  my  mood.  Some 
times  it  was  "Hamlet.''  Taylor  acted  the  Prince,  and 
there  were  many  who  wept  when  Ophelia  went  mad. 
Sometimes  it  was  "Romeo  and  Juliet."  Burbage  was 
Romeo.  He  hardly  looked  the  part  of  the  young  Ital- 
ian, but  there  was  a  rich  music  in  his  voice,  and 
passionate  beauty  in  every  gesture.  I  saw  "As  You 
Like  It,"  and  "Cymbeline,"  and  "Twelfth  Night," 
and  in  each  play  there  was  some  one  whose  life  was 
bound  up  into  mine,  who  realised  for  me  every  dream, 
and  gave  shape  to  every  fancy.  How  gracefully  he 
moved !  The  eyes  of  the  audience  were  fixed  on  him. 

And  yet  it  was  in  this  century  that  it  had  all  hap' 
pened.  I  had  never  seen  my  friend,  but  he  had  been 
with  me  for  many  years,  and  it  was  to  his  influence 


THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H.  II7 

that  I  had  owed  my  passion  for  Greek  thought  and 
art,  and  indeed  all  my  sympathy  with  the  Hellenic 
spirit.  $iA,oaoq)£iv  jiex'  eQwxog!  Ho w  that  phrase 
had  stirred  me  in  my  Oxford  days!  I  did  not  un^ 
derstand  then  why  it  was  so.  But  I  knew  now. 
There  had  been  a  presence  beside  me  always.  Its 
silver  feet  had  trod  night's  shadowy  meadows, 
and  the  white  hands  had  moved  aside  the  trem' 
bling  curtains  of  the  dawn.  It  had  walked  with  me 
through  the  grey  cloisters,  and  when  I  sat  reading 
in  my  room,  it  was  there  also.  What  though  I  had 
been  unconscious  of  it?  The  soul  had  a  life  of  its 
own,  and  the  brain  its  own  sphere  of  action.  There 
was  something  within  us  that  knew  nothing  of  se^ 
quence  or  extension,  and  yet,  like  the  philosopher 
of  the  Ideal  City,  was  the  spectator  of  all  time  and 
of  all  existence.  It  had  senses  that  quickened,  pas' 
sions  that  came  to  birth,  spiritual  ecstasies  of  con- 
templation, ardours  of  fierycoloured  love.  It  was 
we  who  were  unreal,  and  our  conscious  life  was  the 
least  important  part  of  our  development.  The  soul, 
the  secret  soul,  was  the  only  reality. 

How  curiously  it  had  all  been  revealed  to  me!  A 


Il8  THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H. 

book  of  sonnets,  published  nearly  three  hundred 
years  ago,  written  by  a  dead  hand  and  in  honour  of 
a  dead  youth,  had  suddenly  explained  to  me  the 
whole  story  of  my  soul's  romance.  I  remembered 
how  once  in  Egypt  I  had  been  present  at  the  open' 
ing  of  a  frescoed  coffin  that  had  been  found  in  one 
of  the  basalt  tombs  at  Thebes.  Inside  there  was  the 
body  of  a  young  girl  swathed  in  tight  bands  of  linen, 
and  with  a  gilt  mask  over  the  face.  As  I  stooped 
down  to  look  at  it,  I  had  seen  that  one  of  the  little 
withered  hands  held  a  scroll  of  yellow  papyrus 
covered  with  strange  characters.  How  I  wished, 
now  that  I  had  had  it  read  to  me!  It  might  have 
told  me  something  more  about  the  soul  that  hid 
within  me,  and  had  its  mysteries  of  passion  of  which 
I  was  kept  in  ignorance.  Strange,  that  we  knew  so 
little  about  ourselves,  and  that  our  most  intimate 
personality  was  concealed  from  us!  Were  we  to 
look  in  tombs  for  our  real  life,  and  in  art  for  the 
legend  of  our  days? 

Week  after  week,  I  pored  over  these  poems,  and 
each  new  form  of  knowledge  seemed  to  me  a  mode 
of  reminiscence.   Finally,  after  two  months  had 


THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H.  IIQ 

elapsed,  I  determined  to  make  a  strong  appeal  to 
Erskine  to  do  justice  to  the  memory  of  Cyril  Gra' 
ham,  and  to  give  to  the  world  his  marvellous  inter' 
pretation  of  the  Sonnets — the  only  interpretation 
that  thoroughly  explained  the  problem.  I  have  not 
any  copy  of  my  letter,  I  regret  to  say,  nor  have  I 
been  able  to  lay  my  hand  upon  the  original;  but  I 
remember  that  I  went  over  the  whole  ground,  and 
covered  sheets  of  paper  with  passionate  reiteration 
of  the  arguments  and  proofs  that  my  study  had  sug' 
gested  to  me. 

It  seemed  to  me  that  I  was  not  merely  restoring 
Cyril  Graham  to  his  proper  place  in  literary  history, 
but  rescuing  the  honour  of  Shakespeare  himself 
from  the  tedious  memory  of  a  commonplace  in' 
trigue.  I  put  into  the  letter  all  my  enthusiasm.  I  put 
into  the  letter  all  my  faith. 

No  sooner,  in  fact,  had  I  sent  it  off  than  a  curious 
reaction  came  over  me.  It  seemed  to  me  that  I  had 
given  away  my  capacity  for  belief  in  the  Willie 
Hughes  theory  of  the  Sonnets,  that  something  had 
gone  out  of  me,  as  it  were,  and  that  I  was  perfectly 
indifferent  to  the  whole  subject.  What  was  it  that 


I20  THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H. 

had  happened?  It  is  difficult  to  say.  Perhaps,  by 
finding  perfect  expression  for  a  passion,  I  had  ex' 
hausted  the  passion  itself  Emotional  forces,  Hke 
the  forces  of  physical  life,  have  their  positive  limi- 
tations. Perhaps  the  mere  effort  to  convert  any  one 
to  a  theory  involves  some  form  of  renunciation  of 
the  power  of  credence.  Influence  is  simply  a  trans- 
ference of  personality,  a  mode  of  giving  away  what 
is  most  precious  to  one's  self,  and  its  exercise  pro- 
duces a  sense,  and,  it  may  be,  a  reality  of  loss.  Every 
disciple  takes  away  something  from  his  master.  Or 
perhaps  I  had  become  tired  of  the  whole  thing, 
wearied  of  its  fascination,  and,  my  enthusiasm  hav- 
ing burnt  out,  my  reason  was  left  to  its  own  unim- 
passioned  judgment.  However  it  came  about,  and 
I  cannot  pretend  to  explain  it,  there  was  no  doubt 
that  Willie  Hughes  suddenly  became  to  me  a  mere 
myth,  an  idle  dream,  the  boyish  fancy  of  a  young 
man  who,  like  most  ardent  spirits,  was  more  anxious 
to  convince  others  than  to  be  himself  convinced. 

I  must  admit  that  this  was  a  bitter  disappoint- 
ment to  me.  I  had  gone  through  every  phase  of 
this  great  romance.  I  had  lived  with  it,  and  it  had 


THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H.  121 

become  part  of  my  nature.  How  was  it  that  it  had 
left  me?  Had  I  touched  upon  some  secret  that  my 
soul  desired  to  conceal?  Or  was  there  no  perma' 
nence  in  personality?  Did  things  come  and  go 
through  the  brain,  silently,  swiftly,  and  without 
footprints,  like  shadows  through  a  mirror?  Were 
we  at  the  mercy  of  such  impressions  as  Art  or  Life 
chose  to  give  us?  It  seemed  to  me  to  be  so. 

It  was  at  night-time  that  this  feeling  first  came  to 
me.  I  had  sent  my  servant  out  to  post  the  letter  to 
Erskine,  and  was  seated  at  the  window  looking  out 
at  the  blue  and  gold  city.  The  moon  had  not  yet 
risen,  and  th^e  was  only  one  star  in  the  sky,  but 
the  streets  were  full  of  quicklymoving  and  flashing 
lights,  and  the  windows  of  Devonshire  House  were 
illuminated  for  a  great  dinner  to  be  given  to  some 
of  the  foreign  princes  then  visiting  London.  I  saw 
the  scarlet  liveries  of  the  royal  carriages,  and  the 
crowd  hustling  about  the  sombre  gates  of  the 
courtyard. 

Suddenly,  I  said  to  myself:  "I  have  been  dream- 
ing, and  all  my  life  for  these  two  months  has  been  un- 
real. There  was  no  such  person  as  Willie  Hughes." 


122  THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H. 

Something  like  a  faint  cry  of  pain  came  to  my  lips 
as  I  began  to  realise  how  I  had  deceived  myself,  and 
I  buried  my  face  in  my  hands,  struck  with  a  sorrow 
greater  than  any  I  had  felt  since  boyhood.  After  a 
few  moments  I  rose,  and  going  into  the  library  took 
up  the  Sonnets,  and  began  to  read^them.  But  it  was 
all  to  no  avail.  They  gave  me  back  nothing  of  the 
feeling  that  I  had  brought  to  them;  they  revealed 
to  me  nothing  of  what  I  had  found  hidden  in  their 
lines.  Had  I  merely  been  influenced  by  the  beauty 
of  the  forged  portrait,  charmed  by  that  Shelleylike 
face  into  faith  and  credence?  Or,  as  Erskine  had  sug' 
gested,  was  it  the  pathetic  tragedy  of  Cyril  Graham's 
death  that  had  so  deeply  stirred  me?  I  could  not  tell. 
To  the  present  day  I  cannot  understand  the  begin' 
ning  or  the  end  of  this  strange  passage  in  my  life. 

However,  as  I  had  said  some  very  unjust  and  bit- 
ter things  to  Erskine  in  my  letter,  I  determined  to 
go  and  see  him  as  soon  as  possible,  and  make  my 
apologies  to  him  for  my  behaviour.  Accordingly, 
the  next  morning  I  drove  down  to  Birdcage  Walk, 
where  I  found  him  sitting  in  hi?  library,  with  the 
forged  picture  of  Willie  Hughes  in  front  of  him. 


THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H.  1 23 

"  My  dear  Erskine ! "  I  cried, "  I  have  come  to  apol' 
ogise  to  you." 

"To  apologise  to  me?"  he  said.  "What  for?" 

"For  my  letter,"  I  answered. 

"You  have  nothing  to  regret  in  your  letter,"  he 
said.  "On  the  contrary,  you  have  done  me  the  great' 
est  service  in  your  power.  You  have  shown  me  that 
Cyril  Graham's  theory  is  perfectly  sound." 

I  stared  at  him  in  blank  wonder. 

"You  don't  mean  to  say  that  you  believe  inWillie 
Hughes?"  I  exclaimed. 

"Why  not?"  he  rejoined.  "You  have  proved  the 
thing  to  me.  Do  you  think  I  cannot  estimate  the 
value  of  evidence?" 

"But  there  is  no  evidence  at  all,"  I  groaned,  sink' 
ing  into  a  chair.  "When  I  wrote  to  you  I  was  under 
the  influence  of  a  perfectly  silly  enthusiasm.  I  had 
been  touched  by  the  story  of  Cyril  Graham's  death, 
fascinated  by  his  artistic  theory,  enthralled  by  the 
wonder  and  novelty  of  the  whole  idea.  I  see  now 
that  the  theory  is  based  on  a  delusion.  The  only 
evidence  for  the  existence  of  WilHe  Hughes  is  that 
picture  in  front  of  you,  and  that  picture  is  a  forgery. 


124  THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H. 

Don't  be  carried  away  by  mere  sentiment  in  this 
matter.  Whatever  romance  may  have  to  say  about 
the  Willie  Hughes  theory,  reason  is  dead  against  it." 

"I  don't  understand  you,"  said  Erskine,  looking  at 
me  in  amazement.  "You  have  convinced  me  by  your 
letter  that  Willie  Hughes  is  an  absolute  reality. 
Why  have  you  changed  your  mind?  Or  is  all  that 
you  have  been  saying  to  me  merely  a  joke?" 

"I  cannot  explain  it  to  you,"  I  rejoined,  "but  I 
see  now  that  there  is  really  nothing  to  be  said  in 
favour  of  Cyril  Graham's  interpretation.  The  Son' 
nets  may  not  be  addressed  to  Lord  Pembroke.  They 
probably  are  not.  But  for  heaven's  sake  don't  waste 
your  time  in  a  foolish  attempt  to  discover  a  young 
Elizabethan  actor  who  never  existed,  and  to  make 
a  phantom  puppet  the  centre  of  the  great  cycle  of 
Shakespeare's  Sonnets." 

"I  see  that  you  don't  understand  the  theory,"  he 
replied. 

"My  dear  Erskine,"  I  cried,  "not  understand  it! 
Why,  I  feel  as  if  I  had  invented  it.  Surely  my  letter 
shows  you  that  I  not  merely  went  into  the  whole 
matter,  but  that  I  contributed  proofs  of  every  kind. 


THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H.  1 25 

The  one  flaw  in  the  theory  is  that  it  presupposes 
the  existence  of  the  person  whose  existence  is  the 
subject  of  dispute.  If  we  grant  that  there  was  in 
Shakespeare's  company  a  young  actor  of  the  name 
of  Willie  Hughes,  it  is  not  difficult  to  make  him  the 
object  of  the  Sonnets.  But  as  we  know  that  there 
was  no  actor  of  this  name  in  the  company  of  the 
Globe  Theatre,  it  is  idle  to  pursue  the  investigation 
further." 

"But  that  is  exactly  what  we  don't  know,"  said 
Erskine.  "It  is  quite  true  that  his  name  does  not 
occur  in  the  list  given  in  the  first  folio;  but,  as  Cyril 
pointed  out,  that  is  rather  a  proof  in  favour  of  the 
existence  of  Willie  Hughes  than  against  it,  if  we 
remember  his  treacherous  desertion  of  Shakespeare 
for  a  rival  dramatist.  Besides,"  and  here  I  must  ad' 
mit  that  Erskine  made  what  seems  to  me  now  a 
rather  good  point,  though,  at  the  time,  I  laughed  at 
it,  "  there  is  no  reason  at  all  why  Willie  Hughes 
should  not  have  gone  upon  the  stage  under  an  as' 
sumed  name.  In  fact  it  is  extremely  probable  that 
he  did  so.  We  know  that  there  was  a  very  strong 
prejudice  against  the  theatre  in  his  day,  and  noth' 


126  THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H. 

ing  is  more  likely  than  that  his  family  insisted  upon 
his  adopting  some  nom  de  plume.  The  editors  of  the 
first  folio  would  naturally  put  him  down  under  his 
stage  name,  the  name  by  which  he  was  best  known 
to  the  public,  but  the  Sonnets  were  of  course  an  en- 
tirely different  matter,  and  in  the  dedication  to  them 
the  publisher  very  properly  addresses  him  under  his 
real  initials.  If  this  be  so,  and  it  seems  to  me  the  most 
simple  and  rational  explanation  of  the  matter,  I  re- 
gard Cyril  Graham's  theory  as  absolutely  proved." 

"But  what  evidence  have  you?"  I  exclaimed,  lay- 
ing my  hand  on  his.  "You  have  no  evidence  at  all. 
It  is  a  mere  hypothesis.  And  which  of  Shakespeare's 
actors  do  you  think  that  WilHe  Hughes  was?  The 
'pretty  fellow""  Ben  Jonson  tells  us  of,  who  was  so 
fond  of  dressing  up  in  girls'  clothes?" 

"I  don't  know,"  he  answered  rather  irritably.  "I 
have  not  had  time  to  investigate  the  point  yet.  But 
I  feel  quite  sure  that  my  theory  is  the  true  one.  Of 
course  it  is  a  hypothesis,  but  then  it  is  a  hypothesis 
that  explains  everything,  and  if  you  had  been  sent 
to  Cambridge  to  study  science,  instead  of  to  Oxford 
to  dawdle  over  literature,  you  would  know  that  a 


THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H.  1 27 

hypothesis  that  explains  everything  is  a  certainty." 

"Yes,  I  am  aware  that  Cambridge  is  a  sort  of  ed' 
ucational  institute,"  I  murmured.  "I  am  glad  I  was 
not  there." 

"My  dear  fellow,"  said  Erskine,  suddenly  turn' 
ing  his  keen  grey  eyes  on  me,  "you  believe  in  Cyril 
Graham's  theory,  you  believe  in  Willie  Hughes, 
you  know  that  the  Sonnets  are  addressed  to  an  actor, 
but  for  some  reason  or  other  you  won't  acknowl' 
edge  it." 

"I  wish  I  could  believe  it,"  I  rejoined.  "I  would 
give  anything  to  be  able  to  do  so.  But  I  can't.  It  is 
a  sort  of  moonbeam  theory,  very  lovely,  very  fas' 
cinating,  but  intangible.  When  one  thinks  that  one 
has  got  hold  of  it,  it  escapes  one.  No:  Shakespeare's 
heart  is  still  to  us  'a  closet  never  pierc'd  with  crys' 
tal  eyes,'  as  he  calls  it  in  one  of  the  sonnets.  We 
shall  never  know  the  true  secret  of  the  passion  of 
his  Hfe." 

Erskine  sprang  from  the  sofa,  and  paced  up  and 
down  the  room.  "We  know  it  already,"  he  cried, 
"and  the  world  shall  know  it  some  day." 

I  had  never  seen  him  so  excited.  He  would  not 


128  THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H. 

hear  of  my  leaving  him,  and  insisted  on  my  stop- 
ping for  the  rest  of  the  day. 

We  argued  the  matter  over  for  hours,  but  noth- 
ing that  I  could  say  could  make  him  surrender  his 
faith  in  Cyril  Graham's  interpretation.  He  told  me 
that  he  intended  to  devote  his  life  to  proving  the 
theory,  and  that  he  was  determined  to  do  justice  to 
Cyril  Graham's  memory.  I  entreated  him,  laughed 
at  him,  begged  of  him,  but  it  was  to  no  use.  Finally 
we  parted,  not  exactly  in  anger,  but  certainly  with 
a  shadow  between  us.  He  thought  me  shallow,  I 
thought  him  foolish.  When  I  called  on  him  again,  his 
servant  told  me  that  he  had  gone  to  Germany.  The 
letters  that  I  wrote  to  him  remained  unanswered. 

Two  years  afterwards,  as  I  was  going  into  my 
club,  the  hall  porter  handed  me  a  letter  with  a  for- 
eign postmark.  It  was  from  Erskine,  and  written  at 
the  Hotel  d'Angleterre,  Cannes.  When  I  had  read 
it,  I  was  filled  with  horror,  though  I  did  not  quite 
believe  that  he  would  be  so  mad  as  to  carry  his 
resolve  into  execution.  The  gist  of  the  letter  was 
that  he  had  tried  in  every  way  to  verify  the  Willie 
Hughes  theory,  and  had  failed,  and  that  as  Cyril 


THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H.  1 29 

Graham  had  given  his  life  for  this  theory,  he  him' 
self  had  determined  to  give  his  own  life  also  to  the 
same  cause.  The  concluding  words  of  the  letter 
were  these:  "I  still  believe  in  Willie  Hughes;  and 
by  the  time  you  receive  this  I  shall  have  died  by 
my  own  hand  for  Willie  Hughes'  sake:  for  his  sake, 
and  for  the  sake  of  Cyril  Graham,  whom  I  drove  to 
his  death  by  my  shallow  scepticism  and  ignorant 
lack  of  faith.  The  truth  was  once  revealed  to  you, 
and  you  rejected  it.  It  comes  to  you  now,  stained 
with  the  blood  of  two  lives, — do  not  turn  away 
from  it." 

It  was  a  horrible  moment.  I  felt  sick  with  mis' 
ery,  and  yet  I  could  not  believe  that  he  would  really 
carry  out  his  intention.  To  die  for  one's  theological 
opinions  is  the  worst  use  a  man  can  make  of  his  life; 
but  to  die  for  a  literary  theory!  It  seemed  impossible. 

I  looked  at  the  date.  The  letter  v/as  a  week  old. 
Some  unfortunate  chance  had  prevented  my  going 
to  the  club  for  several  days,  or  I  might  have  got  it 
in  time  to  save  him.  Perhaps  it  was  not  too  late.  I 
drove  off  to  my  rooms,  packed  up  my  things,  and 
started  by  the  night  mail  from  Charing  Cross,  The 


130  THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H. 

journey  was  intolerable.  I  thought  I  would  never 
arrive. 

As  soon  as  I  did,  I  drove  to  the  Hotel  d' Angle' 
terre.  It  was  quite  true.  Erskine  was  dead.  They 
told  me  that  he  had  been  buried  two  days  before  in 
the  English  cemetery.  There  was  something  horri' 
bly  grotesque  about  the  whole  tragedy.  I  said  all 
kinds  of  wild  things,and  the  people  in  the  hall  looked 
curiously  at  me. 

Suddenly  Lady  Erskine,  in  deep  mourning,  passed 
across  the  vestibule.  When  she  saw  me  she  came 
up  to  me,  murmured  something  about  her  poor  son, 
and  burst  into  tears.  I  led  her  into  her  sitting  room. 
An  elderly  gentleman  was  there,  reading  a  news' 
paper.  It  was  the  English  doctor. 

We  talked  a  great  deal  about  Erskine,  but  I  said 
nothing  about  his  motive  for  committing  suicide. 
It  was  evident  that  he  had  not  told  his  mother  any- 
thing about  the  reason  that  had  driven  him  to  so 
fatal,  so  mad  an  act.  Finally  Lady  Erskine  rose  and 
said,  "George  left  you  something  as  a  memento.  It 
was  a  thing  he  prizied  very  much.  I  will  get  it  for 
you." 


THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H.  I3I 

As  soon  as  she  had  left  the  room  I  turned  to  the 
doctor  and  said,  "What  a  dreadful  shock  it  must 
have  been  for  Lady  Erskine!  I  wonder  that  she 
bears  it  as  well  as  she  does." 

"Oh,  she  knew  for  months  past  that  it  was  com' 
ing,"  he  answered. 

"Knew  it  for  months  past!"  I  cried.  "But  why 
didn  t  she  stop  him?  Why  didn't  she  have  him 
watched?  He  must  have  been  out  of  his  mind." 

The  doctor  stared  at  me.  "I  don  t  know  what 
you  mean,"  he  said. 

"Well,"  I  cried,  "if  a  mother  knows  that  her  son 
is  going  to  commit  suicide — " 

"Suicide!"  he  answered.  "Poor  Erskine  did  not 
commit  suicide.  He  died  of  consumption.  He  came 
here  to  die.  The  moment  I  saw  him  I  knew  that 
there  was  no  chance.  One  lung  was  almost  gone,  and 
the  other  was  very  much  affected.  Three  days  be 
fore  he  died  he  asked  me  was  there  any  hope.  I  told 
him  frankly  that  there  was  none,  and  that  he  had 
only  a  few  days  to  Hve.  He  wrote  some  letters,  and 
was  quite  resigned,  retaining  his  senses  to  the  last." 

I  got  up  from  my  seat,  and  going  over  to  the  open 


I 

I 
132  THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H. 

window  I  looked  out  on  the  crowded  promenade. 
I  remember  that  the  brightlycoloured  umbrellas 
and  gay  parasols  seemed  to  me  like  huge  fantastic 
butterflies  fluttering  by  the  shore  of  a  blucmetal 
sea,  and  that  the  heavy  odour  of  violets  that  came 
across  the  garden  made  me  think  of  that  wonderful  i 

sonnet  in  which  Shakespeare  tells  us  that  the  scent 
of  these  flowers  always  reminded  him  of  his  friend. 
What  did  it  all  mean?  Why  had  Erskine  written 
me  that  extraordinary  letter?  Why  when  standing 
at  the  very  gate  of  death  had  he  turned  back  to  tell 
me  what  was  not  true  ?  Was  Hugo  right?  Is  affecta^ 
tion  the  only  thing  that  accompanies  a  man  up  the 
steps  of  the  scaffold?  Did  Erskine  merely  want  to 
produce  a  dramatic  eff'ect?  That  was  not  like  him. 
It  was  more  like  something  I  might  have  done  my 
self.  No:  he  was  simply  actuated  by  a  desire  to 
reconvert  me  to  Cyril  Graham's  theory,  and  he 
thought  that  if  I  could  be  made  to  believe  that  he 
too  had  given  his  life  for  it,  I  would  be  deceived  by 
the  pathetic  fallacy  of  martyrdom.  Poor  Erskine!  I 
had  grown  wiser  since  I  had  seen  him.  Martyrdom 
was  to  me  merely  a  tragic  form  of  scepticism,  an 


THE  PORTRAIT  OF  MR  W.  H.  1 33 

attempt  to  realise  by  fire  what  one  had  failed  to  do 
by  faith.  No  man  dies  for  what  he  knows  to  be  true. 
Men  die  for  what  they  want  to  be  true,  for  what 
some  terror  in  their  hearts  tells  them  is  not  true. 
The  very  uselessness  of  Erskine's  letter  made  me 
doubly  sorry  for  him.  I  watched  the  people  stroll- 
ing in  and  out  of  the  cafes,  and  wondered  if  any  of 
them  had  known  him.  The  white  dust  blew  down 
the  scorched  sunlit  road,  and  the  feathery  palms 
moved  restlessly  in  the  shaken  air. 

At  that  moment  Lady  Erskine  returned  to  the 
room  carrying  the  fatal  portrait  of  Willie  Hughes. 
"When  George  was  dying,  he  begged  me  to  give 
you  this,''  she  said.  As  I  took  it  from  her,  her  tears 
fell  on  my  hand. 

This  curious  work  of  art  hangs  now  in  my  library, 
where  it  is  very  much  admired  by  my  artistic  friends, 
one  of  whom  has  etched  it  for  me.  They  have  dc 
cided  that  it  is  not  a  Clouet,  but  an  Ouvry.  I  have 
never  cared  to  tell  them  its  true  history,  but  some 
times,  when  I  look  at  it,  I  think  there  is  really  a 
great  deal  to  be  said  for  the  Willie  Hughes  theory 
of  Shakespeare's  Sonnets. 


I 


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